jilijlii 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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KNOWLEDGE,    LIFE   AND   REALITY 


KNOWLEDGE, 
LIFE   AND    REALITY 

AN    ESSAY    IN 
SYSTEMATIC   PHILOSOPHY 


BY 

George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D. 

AUTHOR    OF     "philosophy     OF    MIND,"     "PHILOSOPHY 

OF    CONDUCT,"     "a    THEORY    OF  REALITY," 

"philosophy    OF    RELIGION,"    ETC. 


NEW    HAVEN 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXVIII 


Copyright,  1909 
DODD,  MEAD  &  CO. 

Copyright,  1918 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


^ 


c" 


"From  the  unreal  lead  me  to  the  real. 
From  darkness  lead  me  to  light. 
From  death  lead  me  to  immortality." 

Brihad  Aranyaka  Upanishai),  1,  3,  27< 

"  Intellect  relies  on  Reason,  Faith  on  Author- 
ity; opinion  defends  itself  by  prohability  alone. 
These  two  comprehend  the  sure  truth;  hut  faith, 
in  closed  and  involuted,  intelligence,  in  exposed 

N  and  manifest,  form." 

^  Bernard. 


160171 


PREFACE 

The  service  which  it  is  hoped  that  this  book  may  in  some 
measure  accomplish,  can  best  be  explained  by  a  reference  to 
the  life-work  and  life-purpose  of  its  author.  For  more  than 
a  generation  it  has  been  his  daily  duty  to  observe,  read,  teach, 
and  reflect,  within  the  field  covered  by  problems  which  are 
somewhat  vaguely  grouped  together  under  the  word,  "  philos- 
ophy." During  this  period  the  conviction  has  been  growing 
that  Plato,  when  he  remarked  a  likeness  between  tlie  fitting 
attitude  of  the  soul  toward  these  problems,  and  the  most  ten- 
der, absorbing,  and  important,  of  human  personal  relations, 
spoke  to  the  world  of  men  something  more  valuable  than  a 
taking,  but  extravagant  hyperbole.  I  am  well  aware  that  tills 
is  not  the  popular  estimate  of  philosophy  at  the  present  time; 
and  the  fact  that  it  is  not,  is  by  no  means  wholly  due  to  an 
adverse  spirit  in  the  age.  It  is  almost  equally  due  to  the  way 
in  which  its  interests  have  been  "exploited"  (I  use  the  word 
intelligently  and  deliberately)  by  many  to  whom  the  care  of 
philosophic  culture  has  been  especially  entrusted. 

Formerly,  the  teachers  and  writers  in  the  field  of  philosophy, 
— especially  of  ethics  and  the  philosophy  of  religion,  but  also 
of  general  metaphysics,  and  even  of  the  allied  subjects  of  psy- 
chology and  logic, — were  chiefly,  and  indeed  almost  exclusively, 
the  presidents  of  our  colleges  and  others  who  had  received  an 
education  in  theology.  Many,  and  perhaps  the  majority,  of 
their  pupils  and  readers,  were  either  intending  to  enter  the 
ministry,  or  were  already  enjoying  the  opportunities,  and 
bound  by  the  duties,  of  the  ministerial  office.  What  they  had 
to  gain  from  the  class-room,  or  from  the  reading  of  books  on 
philosophy,  was  expected  to  be  useful,  in  an  important  and  im- 


PREFACE 

mediate  way,  as  preparation  for  their  professional  life.  The 
others,  and  indeed  all,  who  were  having  what  was  then  called 
a  "  liberal  education,"  were  required  to  study  the  same  sub- 
jects; and  thus  to  get  at  least  some  dim  and  inchoate  conception 
of  the  nature  of  philosophy,  and  some  appreciation,  either  fav- 
orable or  unfavorable,  of  its  application  to  the  ideals  and  the 
conduct  of  a  truly  successful  life.  Now,  however,  for  a  consid- 
erable time,  it  has  been  quite  the  fashion  to  complain  of  the 
work  done  in  this  way,  as  dull  and  depressing;  and  to  dis- 
credit the  results,  as  tending  to  discourage,  rather  than  elicit 
and  encourage,  a  taste  for  prolonged  reading  and  serious  study 
of  the  issues  and  the  problems  of  reflective  thinking.  And 
doubtless,  there  is  much  truth  of  fact  to  warrant  this  lowered 
estimate  of  a  now  old-fashioned  regard  for,  and  use  of,  the 
discipline  of  philosophy  as  an  essential  for  making  a  noble 
manhood,  and  for  imparting  a  truly  liberal  and  fine  culture. 
But  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  there  is  also  much  misunder- 
standing and  even  misrepresentation  as  to  the  real  facts.  I 
believe  tliat  the  maturer  impressions  are  more  favorable  as  to 
the  results  actually  achieved  by  these  now  abandoned  methods. 
But,  however  this  may  be,  about  one  thing  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  The  intention  of  the  age  was  to  make  reflection  a  duty, 
and  its  results  an  important  factor  in  the  better  and  nobler  life. 
And  in  very  truth,  the  study  of  philosophy,  however  con- 
ducted or  however  far  carried,  cannot  be  safely  undertaken 
with  either  intellectual  or  moral  indifi^erence.  Indeed,  I  am 
willing  to  adopt  Plato's  figure  of  speech  and  to  put  its  state- 
ment into  Tuore  modern,  but  not  more  genuinely  devout  terms. 
Problems  liaving  to  do  with  the  validity  of  human  Knowledge, 
the  ideals  of  human  Life,  and  the  ultimate  nature  of  Reality, 
are  "not  by  any  to  be  entered  into  unadvisedly  or  lightly;  but 
reverently,  discreetly,  advisedly,  soberly,  and  in  the  fear  of 
God."  In  the  case  of  these  problems,  most  emphatically, 
truths  arrived  at  by  speculation  on  a  basis  of  experienced  facts, 
cannot  be  separated  from  truths  that  demand  from  us  the  guid- 


PREFACE 

ance  of  our  practice  and  the  control  of  life.  Such  truths  are, 
indeed,  something  more  than  "  pragmatic,"  in  the  present,  cur- 
rent conception  of  this  uncertain  and  much-ahused  word.  On 
the  one  hand,  they  require  the  profoundest  use  of  reason  for 
their  discovery,  defence,  and  elaboration;  on  the  other  hand, 
they  exercise  the  profoundest  influence  upon  the  satisfactions, 
the  character,  and  tlie  destiny,  of  the  soul.  The  age,  therefore, 
which  neglects  philosophy  is  sure  to  be  sensuous  and  vulgar. 
The  age  which  treats  philosophy  flippantly  is  sure  to  be  shallow 
and,  at  the  end,  dissatisfied  with  its  achievements.  The  age 
that  takes  its  philosophy  seriously,  and  even  passionately,  gains 
thereby  an  enormous  accession  of  motive  power  for  either  evil 
or  good  results.  It  is  a  matter,  then,  which  the  author  has 
upon  his  heart  and  conscience,  to  make  this  book  of  .^ome  help 
to  its  readers  by  way  of  appreciating  and  illumining  those  ques- 
tions which  every  rational  being  ought  to  ask  himself;  and 
which  are  here  brought  together  under  the  title :  "  Knowledge, 
Life,  and  Eeality." 

That  our  common  purpose  may  be  attained  the  better,  I  have 
two  requests  to  make  of  my  readers.  The  first  of  these  is  that 
they  will  not  assign  me  to  any  so-called  "  school,"  or  to  any 
master  as  his  pupil, — at  least,  not  prematurely.  I  have 
learned,  indeed,  from  many  sources;  and  not  in  smallest  meas- 
ure from  my  own  pupils;  who,  being  themselves  educated 
under  varying  intellectual  and  social  influences.  Occidental  and 
Oriental,  have  discussed  with  me  and  with  one  another,  all  the 
major,  and  most  of  the  minor  problems  of  philosophy.  In  do- 
ing this  we  have,  of  course,  made  use  of  the  writings  of  the 
great  masters  both  in  ancient  and  in  modern  times.  But,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  I  have  never  allowed  myself  to  do,  what  I 
have  earnestly  striven  to  prevent  them  from  doing, — namely, 
form  an  uncritical  and  fixed  attachment  for  any  system  of  re- 
flective thinking,  taken  as  a  whole.  The  motto  of  tlie  class- 
room aiid  of  the  private  study  has  ever  been :  NuUius  jvrare 
in  verba  magistri.    Besides  this,  my  own  development  of  any  at- 


PREFACE 

tempt  at  systematic  results,  whicli  has  been  rather  abnormally 
slow,  has  been  preceded  by  prolonged  study  of  the  separate 
problems,  the  solutions  of  which  need  to  be  combined  in  the 
total  result.  However  all  this  may  be,  my  request  is  simply 
this :  "  Let  us  both,  reader  and  author,  abjure  all  deference 
to  the  '  idols  of  the  theater,'  as  well  as  to  the  '  idols  of  the  cave,' 
and  try  to  frame  and  judge  our  philosophical  opinions  according 
to  the  harmony  of  the  truths  that  are  expressed  in  them." 

One  other  request  seems  to  me  equally  reasonable.  It  is  that 
a  fair  amount  of  candid  reflection  shall  determine  the  mean- 
ing, and  the  truth  of  the  meaning,  which  has  been  put  into  the 
words.  There  is  no  inherent  reason  why  philosophical  opinions 
should  not  be  made  intelligible  to  any  intelligent  and  thought- 
ful, not  to  say  educated,  reader.  But  this  desirable  end  can- 
not be  reached  without  a  genuine  effort  at  co-operation.  Pro- 
found philosophy  may  be  taught  in  poetry,  drama,  and  even  in 
the  novel.  But  if  it  is  to  be  got  out  of  these  captivating  forms 
of  its  presentation,  the  author  cannot  do  all  the  work.  In  this 
book  I  have,  for  the  most  part,  carefully  avoided  all  technical 
language;  and  I  have  taken  pains  to  make  my  meaning  clear. 
But  the  very  subject — since  philosophy  is  the  product  of  re- 
flective thinking — requires  the  studious  and  reflecting  mind  on 
the  part  of  those  who  make  use  of  the  book.  If  in  any  places 
it  shall  seem  more  difficult  to  understand — not  to  say,  essen- 
tially obscure, — than  the  nature  of  the  discussion  itself  makes 
reasonable,  I  shall  stand  ready  to  confess  my  failure  and  to 
bear  the  blame.  But  I  cannot  promise  or  hope  to  be  under- 
stood by  those  who  care  only  to  be,  for  the  moment,  entertained ; 
or  who  have  neither  the  inclination  nor  the  leisure  to  give  to 
my  efforts  any  measure  of  careful  and  thoughtful  attention. 

To  those  who  are  already  at  all  familiar  with  the  other  writ- 
ings on  philosophy  by  the  same  author,  as  well  as  to  those  who 
may  possibly  be  attracted  to  some  of  those  writings  by  reading 
this  book,  a  further  word  of  introduction  may  prove  helpful. 
During  the  last  twenty-five  years,  I  have  treated  of  the  leading 


PREFACE 

questions,  the  more  prominent  aspects  of  philosophy,  in  a  series 
of  monographs.  Several  of  these  have  been  designedly  techni- 
cal and  elaborate  treatises  of  particular  departments  of  gen- 
eral philosophy.  But  in  this  one  volume  I  am  putting  into 
semi-popular  form  the  system  of  reflective  thinking  which  has 
been  evolved  and  published  previously  in  separate  volumes.  The 
reader  who  desires  a  more  detailed  exposition  and  defense  of 
this  system  should  study  it  in  these  monographs.  To  them, 
however,  not  infrequent  reference  is  made  in  the  present  vol- 
ume. 

GEORGE  TRUMBULL  LADD. 
New  Haven,  August,  1909. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

I    Philosophy:    Its  Conception  and  its  Prob- 
lems       1 

II    Philosophy  :  Its  Method  and  its  Divisions     .  21 

III  Schools  of  Philosophy 33 

IV  Philosophy  of  Knowledge:  The  Psycholog- 

ical View 57 

V    Kinds,  Degrees,  and  Limits  of  Knowledge    .  78 
VI    Principles  and  Presuppositions   of   Knowl- 
edge       •  101 

VII    Scepticism,  Agnosticism,  and  Criticism  .      .  125 

VIII    Metaphysics,  as  a  Theory  of  Eeality  ...  154 
IX    Nature  and  Significance  of  the  So-called 

"Categories" 171 

X    Philosophy  of  Nature 195 

XI    Philosophy  of  Mind 225 

XII    Matter  and  Mind  :  Nature  and  Spirit  .      .      .  253 
XIII    Ethics,   or  Moral  Philosophy:   Its   Sphere 

and  Problems 2G8 

XIV    The  Moral  Self 278 

XV    The  Morally  Good:  Its  Kinds  (the  Virtues) 

AND  its  Unity 314 

XVI    Schools  of  Ethics 336 

XVII     yEsTHETICAL     CONSCIOUSNESS 365 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

XVIII   The  Arts:  Their  Classification  and  Nature  384 

XIX    The  Spirit  of  Beauty 409 

XX   Philosophy  of  Religion  :  Its  Origin  in  Expe- 
rience         430 

XXI    The  World-Ground  as  Absolute  Person  .      .  456 

XXII    God  as  Ethical  Spirit 478 

XXIII  God  and  the  World 504 

XXIV  Summary  and  Conclusion 526 


CHAPTER  I 

PHILOSOPHY:   ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS 

In  its  more  general  and  vague,  but  most  adequate  and  human 
meaning,  the  word  "  Philosophy  "  may  be  made  to  include  all 
the  products  of  man's  reflective  thinking.  And  since  man,  as 
we  know  him  in  history,  has  always  been  given  to  reflection, 
fragments  of  thought  which  bear  the  characteristic  marks  of 
the  philosophical  interpretation  of  experience,  exist  from  the 
beginning.  Indeed,  if  we  discard  all  uncertain  conjectures  with 
regard  to  that  mythical  being,  the  so-called  "  primitive  man," 
and  the  yet  more  uncertain  conjectures  as  to  some  order  of 
beings  half-human,  half-animal,  we  must  agree  with  Aristotle: 
"  All  men  by  nature  reach  after  knowledge."  But  this  sentence 
occurs  at  the  beginning  of  his  work  on  Metaphysics,  or  First 
Philosophy;  and  the  kind  of  knowledge  to  which  he  refers  is 
the  distinguishing  pursuit  of  the  philosopher.  To  philosophize, 
then,  is  to  be  human.  For  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Shadworth 
Hodgson :  "  The  need  to  philosophize  is  rooted  in  our  nature 
as  deeply  as  any  other  of  our  needs." 

As  a  matter  of  course,  however,  men  began  at  first  to  reflect 
upon  those  facts  of  external  nature,  and  those  inner  experi- 
ences, which  seemed  of  most  immediate  and  pressing  interest. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  too,  both  the  method  used  and  the  results 
of  their  reflection,  were  vague,  confused,  and  indecisive.  But 
in  saying  this,  we  must  be  careful  not  to  do  discredit  to  the 
intellectual  acumen  and  intellectual  interests  of  the  most  unde- 
veloped races  or  barbarous  and  uncivilized  peoples.  Modern 
research  seems  rather  to  be  widening  than  closing  up  the  gap 
between  the  least  civilized  known  races  of  men  and  the  most 
intelligent  of  the  lower  animals.     And  at  the  same  time,  it  is 


2  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

increasingly  emphasizing  the  essential  spiritual  unity  of  the 
human  race.  Their  language,  customs,  folk-lore,  and  attempts 
at  scientific  explanation  and  philosophical  interpretation,  show 
these  so-called  primitive  peoples  to  be  lacking,  not  so  much 
in  intellectual  quality  or  ethical  sensitiveness,  as  in  the  enjo}^- 
ment  of  the  accumulated  resources  of  a  long  line  of  ancestral 
efforts,  under  the  more  favorable  physical  and  social  circum- 
stances— which  we  at  present  enjoy.  Nor  are  they  altogether 
deficient  in  power  to  make  some  of  the  most  essential  philosoph- 
ical distinctions.  The  untutored  man,  the  member  of  a  some- 
what isolated  savage  tribe,  has  little  inducement,  and  less  oppor- 
tunity, for  cultivating  any  of  the  particular  sciences  after  the 
modern  method  of  experiment  and  induction.  He  attributes 
the  direction  and  flight  of  his  arrow  to  the  strength  of  his  bow 
and  the  pull  of  his  arm ;  the  grateful  sensations  of  warmth  to 
the  sun  or  to  the  fire;  the  birth  of  children  to  the  act  of  pro- 
creation; the  drift  of  his  canoe  to  the  currents  of  water  and 
wind.  But  to  him  the  wind,  the  sun,  the  fire,  are  themselves 
mysteries  too  deep  and  high  for  solution  by  any  formula  that 
summarizes  facts  of  invariable  or  customary  sequence;  there- 
fore he  naively  and  instinctively  resorts  at  once  to  the  meta- 
physical interpretation  of  his  experience;  he  makes  gods  out  of 
these  natural  objects,  who  must  be  propitiated  or  obeyed.  How, 
indeed,  should  he  arrive  at  a  scientific  explanation  of 
phenomena  which  are  increasingly  difficult  and  baffling  even 
for  modern  physics  to  explain?  Why,  also,  should  he  not, 
failing  of  modern  science,  recognize  at  once  what  this  science 
itself  is  compelled  to  recognize — namely,  that,  back  of  all 
its  formulas,  there  is  a  Being  of  the  World,  which  the  human 
mind  is  compelled  to  interpret  as  like  itself,  and  yet  superior  to 
itself?  And  as  to  the  phenomena  of  birth,  and  life,  and  death, 
this  need  of  the  philosophical  interpretation,  as  something 
additional  and  yet  working,  as  it  were,  in  and  through  the 
scientific  explanation,  is  surely  no  less  great  for  the  savage 
than  it  is  for  the  most  learned  of  modern  biologists. 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS     3 

It  is  not  strange,  tlierefore,  that  even  among  the  most  gifted 
and  progressive  peoples,  philosophy  did  not  earlier  separate 
itself  from  other  cognate  forms  of  human  endeavor,  as  a  sort 
of  independent  discipline.  It  was,  at  first,  the  rather,  all  inter- 
mixed with  literature,  in  the  form  of  myth,  legend  and  poetry; 
with  crude  attempts  at  history,  and  with  the  uncertain  begin- 
nings of  the  particular  sciences;  but  above  all  with  theology  and 
religion.  Indeed,  a  large  proportion  of  the  philosophizing 
done  at  the  present  time,  and  that  by  no  means  the  least  im- 
portant, does  not  recognize  in  any  practical  Avay  the  necessity 
for  making  this  separation.  In  India,  which  has  been  charac- 
terized for  centuries  by  a  kind  of  speculative  genius,  philosophy 
is  chiefly  an  attempt  at  a  deductive  theology,  which  may  be  made 
a  matter  of  science  resting  upon  personal  experience  for  the 
more  profound  thinkers,  but  v/hich  is  given  to  the  people  in  the 
form  of  religious  myth.  In  China,  philosophy  is  either  a  science 
of  politics,  as  related  to  heavenly  powers  and  to  the  spirits  of 
deceased  ancestors;  or  else  it  is  a  conglomerate  of  geomancy 
or  other  forms  of  divination,  based  upon  a  crude  and  antiquated 
conception  of  nature.  In  Japan,  apart  from  the  importations 
of  Western  speculative  thought,  philosophy  consists  either  of 
hair-splitting  distinctions  in  the  pantheistic  systems  of  the 
various  sects  of  Buddhism,  or  in  the  distinctive  development 
given  in  that  land  to  the  Confucian  ethics  by  the  demands  of 
its  feudal  system.  While  all  over  the  Muhammadan  world, 
philosophy  is  a  rigid  and  uncompromising  doctrine  of  either 
practical  or  mystical  monotheism.  But  these  countries  com- 
prise, not  only  the  majority  of  the  civilized  races,  but  also 
some  of  the  most  interesting  and  choice  developments  of  re- 
flective thinking. 

It  is  customary  to  say  that  the  Greeks  were  the  first  to  culti- 
vate philosophy  as  an  independent  discipline.  Hence  we  flatter 
ourselves  by  deriving  our  descent  from  these  gifted  ancients, 
along  the  lines  of  reflective  thinking  and  its  product  in  the 
form  of  systematic  philosophy.     This  is  largely,  and  yet  only 


4  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

partially,  true.  But  as  Zeller  has  shovm,  even  the  indefinite- 
ness  of  the  term  "  philosophy "  among  the  classical  Greeks, 
and  yet  more  among  their  degenerate  successors,  proves  that 
the  thing  itself  had  scarcely  as  yet  appeared  as  a  "  specific  form 
of  intellectual  life."  When  the  earliest  Greek  writers  sepa- 
rated so-called  philosophy  from  its  traditional  form  of  religious 
myth  and  poetry,  they  made  of  it  a  sort  of  crude  metaphysics 
of  physics.  The  term  "natural  philosophy,"  which  persisted 
down  to  the  more  recent  times,  has,  therefore,  a  legitimate 
birthright.  There  was  no  attempt  among  the  Greeks,  however, 
to  distinguish  between  science  and  philosophy.  Indeed,  in  the 
modern  meaning  of  the  words,  there  was  as  little  science  as 
philosophy.  And  the  moment— as  was  inevitable — that  the  in- 
sufficiency of  any  material  principle  like  water,  air,  fire,  or  the 
"  unlimited  "  of  Anaximander,  "  The  infinite  mass  of  matter 
out  of  which  all  things  arise,"  became  apparent,  something 
spiritual  in  the  way  of  a  Divine  Being,  or  Mind,  was  assumed  as 
necessary  to  interpret  the  sum-total  of  phenomena.  That  is  to 
say,  the  need  of  something  super-sensible,  if  not  strictly  super- 
natural, in  order  to  complete  the  explanation,  was  fully  recog- 
nized. Even  Plato  and  Aristotle  did  not  hold  a  conception  of 
metaphysics  favorable  to  its  claim  to  a  domain  distinct  from  the 
particular  sciences.  The  former  did,  indeed,  recognize  a  system, 
or  kingdom,  of  "  ideas,"  which  under  the  supremacy  of  the 
Idea  of  the  Good  was  to  furnish  an  explanation  of  all  that  men 
esteem  actual  in  occurrences,  or  real  in  existence,  as  tested  by 
their  daily  experiences.  But  this  doctrine  supersedes  by  abol- 
ishing all  that  the  modern  man  considers  essential  to  the  con- 
ceptions and  working  methods  of  the  particular  sciences.  Plato's 
definition  of  philosophy  makes  it  a  certain  attitude  of  mind 
rather  than  any  systematized  collection  of  the  fruits  of  reflective 
thinking  as  guided  by  the  principles  and  discoveries  of  the 
particular  sciences.  With  Aristotle,  however,  philosophy,  or  as 
he  sometimes  called  the  same  thing  "wisdom"  (<70<pia),  was 
identified  with  science  in  general.    It,  therefore,  included  the 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS     5 

theoretical  sciences  of  mathematics,  physics,  and  theology,  and 
also  the  practical  sciences  of  ethics  and  politics.  But  this 
greatest  of  ancient  thinkers  also  recognized  a  "First  Philoso- 
phy"— a  pre-eminently  philosophical  discipline  which  comprised 
the  systematic  and  critical  knowledge  of  the  most  general  and 
fundamental  principles  of  Being.  In  modern  times  we  should 
call  this  "  metaphysics  "  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  the  word ; 
or  "ontology." 

After  Aristotle,  and  until  comparatively  recent  times,  little 
or  no  advance  was  made  in  limiting  or  clearing  up  the  con- 
ception of  philosophy.  During  the  mediaeval  period  in  Europe 
it  was  almost  completely  identified  with  the  defence  or  attack 
of  churchly  dogma,  or  the  prevalent  and  authorized  systematic 
theology.  Descartes,  who  is  popularly  called  the  "  father  of 
modern  philosophy,"  in  his  three  principal  works  included  the 
discussion  of  topics  which  would  now  be  divided  amongst 
treatises  on  logic,  theory  of  knowledge,  metaphysics,  theology, 
and  physics.  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz  did  not  distinguish  be- 
tween philosophy  on  the  one  hand,  and  theology  and  the  particu- 
lar sciences  on  the  other  hand.  Locke,  and  his  successors  in 
England  and  France,  did  not  separate  the  metaphysics  of  mind 
from  psychology  and  a  theory  of  scientific  method.  Indeed,  in 
England  almost  down  to  the  present  time  the  use  of  the  word 
has  been  so  loose  as  to  justify  the  sarcasm  of  Hegel,  called  forth 
by  an  advertisement  promising  to  teach,  for  seven  shillings, 
"The  Art  of  Preserving  the  Hair  on  Philosophical  Principles." 

It  was  Immanuel  Kant  who  undertook  the  more  precise  lim- 
itation of  the  province  of  philosophy.  This  he  thought  to 
accomplish  satisfactorily  by  his  customary  method  of  hard-  and 
fixed-line  divisions.  All  knowledge,  he  held,  is  either  historical 
or  rational;  the  former  sets  out  from  empirical  data,  the  latter 
from  principles.  Again,  of  this  rational  knowledge,  one  kind 
is  based  on  concepts ;  the  other  is  based  on  the  construction  of 
concepts.  The  former  alone  is  philosophical,  the  latter  is 
mathematical.    Thus  does  Kant  with  two  strokes  mark  out  the 


6  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

domain  of  philosophy,  as  distinguished  from  the  empirical 
sciences  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  from  pure  mathe- 
matics. He  then  proceeds  to  divide  philosophy,  as  related  to 
the  ends  of  reason,  into  moral  philosophy  and  cosmical 
philosophy;  as  to  its  objects,  into  the  philosophy  of  nature  and 
the  philosophy  of  morals;  and  as  to  its  methods,  into  pure  and 
empirical. 

Careful  reflection,  and  even  a  superficial  acquaintance  with 
history  since  Kant,  convinces  us  that  his  distinctions  cannot  be 
justified  in  their  original  rigidity;  nor  can  the  divisions  which 
grew  out  of  them  be  comprehensively  maintained.  The  develop- 
ment of  human  reason,  too,  has  its  history;  and  the  empirical 
sciences  have  no  history  except  as  they  are  germinated  and  illu- 
minated by  the  same  human  reason.  No  form  of  knowledge, 
least  of  all  either  cosmical  or  moral  philosophy,  can  be  "  based 
on  concepts"  that  are  not  themselves  empirically  derived,  or 
based  on  experience. 

If  we  were  to  follow  in  detail  the  various  attempts  which 
have  been  made  since  Kant  by  the  more  or  less  distinguished 
writers  on  philosophical  topics,  to  define  strictly  their  concep- 
tion of  their  pursuit  as  at  least  a  relatively  independent  and 
separate  discipline,  the  result  would  be  only  to  add  to  our  dis- 
appointment. The  inquiry,  "  What  is  philosophy  ?  "  cannot  be 
answered  by  a  direct  appeal  to  history.  Neither  can  we  find  any 
great  authority  in  either  science  or  philosophy  who  has  suc- 
ceeded, either  theoretically  or  in  his  own  practice,  in  completely 
and  clearly  dividing  off  the  domains  rightly  allotted  to  these  two 
forms  of  intellectual  endeavor.  All  the  sciences  are  still,  either 
naively  or  intelligently,  metaphysical; — that  is,  they  are  actu- 
ally interested  and  concerned  in  the  development  of  the  oldest 
and  most  persistent  branch  of  philosophical  discipline;  and  no 
branch  or  school  of  philosophy  can  even  begin  its  investigation 
and  display  of  material,  without  a  concealed  or  frank,  but 
always  absolute,  dependence  upon  the  positive  sciences. 

When,  then,  we  hear  Hegel  and  Trendelenburg  defining  phi- 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS     7 

losophy  as  the  "science  of  the  Idea";  while  another  writer 
dechires  that  it  is  "  the  rational  science  of  reality  " ;  and  yet 
another  identifies  it  with  the  "  metaphysics  of  the  uncon- 
scious," or  with  a  "  theory  of  universal  knowledge,"  or  with 
"  self-knowledge,"  or  with  the  "  systematic  arrangement  of 
the  necessary  a  priori  elements  or  factors  in  experience,"  or 
duhs  it  "  the  return  of  Metaphysic  upon  psychology  " ; — we  need 
not  be  dismayed  or  wholly  discouraged  by  the  failure  to  unite 
all  authorities  in  the  use  of  common  terms  to  define  their 
conception  of  divine  philosophy.  The  authorities  in  science  do 
not  unite  upon  a  definition  of  any  one  of  the  so-called  "  positive 
sciences  " — not  even  of  mathematics,  the  most  positive  of  them 
all.  Neither  has  any  of  them  a  favorite  theory  which  com- 
mands a  quite  universal  consent.  While  it  is  notorious  that  if 
one  wants  an  infallible  expert  opinion  regarding  some  compli- 
cated, concrete  case  to  which  these  principles  may  be  applied, 
inquiry  for  it  is  apt  to  result  in  the  increase  of  one's  confusion 
of  judgment. 

It  would  be  a  gross  violation  of  the  spirit  and  method  of 
philosophy,  however,  to  conclude  that  nothing  is  to  be  learned 
from  history  about  its  conception  and  its  problems.  On  the 
contrary,  the  vague  but  historically  true  declaration  that  phi- 
losophy is  a  term  which  may  be  used  to  cover  all  the  fruits  of 
man's  reflective  thinking,  and  that  it  is  human  to  philosophize, 
may  now  be  converted  into  certain  statements  more  strictly 
defined  and  technically  correct.  History  teaches  us — that  of 
the  particular  sciences  as  well  as  the  history  of  philosophy — 
that  the  human  mind  has  never  been,  much  less  is  it  now,  satis- 
fied with  those  explanations  of  experience  which  terminate  in 
the  relating,  causally,  and  concatenating  of  phenomena,  under 
terms  that  lay  claim  to  more  or  less  of  mathematical  exactness. 
The  intellect  seeks  for  some  more  ulterior  and  fundamental,  for 
some  more  nearly  ultimate  and  final,  explanations  of  human 
experience.  The  heart  craves,  and  the  conduct  of  life  demands, 
such  interpretations  of  the  Being  of  the  physical  Universe,  of 


8  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  natural  objects  and  laws  tliat  are  progressively  revealed  to 
human  observation,  and  of  the  significance  and  destiny  of 
human  life,  with  its  relation  to  unseen  forces  and  agencies,  as 
shall  be  in  accord  with  humanity's  most  important  and  per- 
sistent ideals.  All  the  positive  sciences  are  obliged  to  recognize 
these  ffisthetical  and  quasi-moral,  as  well  as  more  purely  intel- 
lectual demands.  Hence  they  are  all,  both  in  their  foundations 
and  in  their  upper  reaches  of  theory  and  speculation,  essentially 
philosophical.  Physics  and  chemistry  have  their  theory  of 
reality  as  truly  as  does  religion.  The  doctrine  of  the  ether,  or 
of  the  atoms,  or  of  the  ions,  as  the  builders  of  the  world  of 
inorganic  and  organized  existences  as  it  appears  in  experience, 
is  as  much  a  system  of  metaphysics  as  was  Plato's  kingdom  of 
Ideas,  or  Hegel's  self-evolution  of  necessary  and  rational  con- 
cepts. The  assumptions  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences, 
their  categories  and  principles  taken  for  granted,  require  and 
merit  criticism,  and  even  sceptical  inquiry,  as  acutely  and 
persistently  as  did  those  of  the  medieval  theology.  It  would 
be  a  desirable  and  beneficent  thing  for  human  knowledge,  if  the 
experts  in  these  sciences  would  themselves  undertake  this  task 
of  critical  philosophy;  just  as  it  would  have  been  desirable  for 
the  theologians  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  have  looked  more  scep- 
tically upon  their  own  presuppositions  and  contested  principles. 
But  neither  science  nor  theology,  nor  any  form  of  the  so-called 
"humanities,"  can  properly  claim  to  lie  outside  the  domain 
which  is  to  be  kept  open  always  to  the  critical  explorations  of 
that  form  of  reflective  thinking  which  is  called  philoso- 
phizing. 

But  now  the  question  recurs:  Can  we  define  philosophy  as 
an  independent  and  separate  science  or  discipline?  Certainly 
not,  in  any  strict  meaning  of  the  words  "  independent  "  and 
"  separate."  The  attempt  to  do  this,  and  thus  exalt  philosophy 
as  the  so-called  "  science  of  the  sciences  "  to  the  position  of 
judge  and  arbiter,  or  even  of  sovereign,  over  the  particular  forms 
of  intellectual  life  which  arrogate  to  themselves  the  title  to  be 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS     9 

called  scientific,  has  been  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  modem 
contempt  and  rejection  of  philosophy.  Thus  philosophy  has 
recently  exhibited  the  pitiful  spectacle — to  borrow  a  phrase 
from  Lotze — of  "  a  mother  wounded  by  her  own  children." 
But  after  all,  this  may  be  only  a  part  of  the  general  tendency  of 
an  age  which  exalts  the  young  and  relatively  thoughtless  to  a 
supremacy  over  the  aged  and  more  mature.  And  there  are  some 
plain  and  gratifying  signs  that  the  hostile  or  negligent  attitude 
of  science  and  philosophy  toward  each  other  is  only  temporary. 
This  attitude,  indeed,  must  ultimately  pass  away;  since  both 
start  in  the  same  sources  of  human  nature  and  have  the  same 
final  purposes  in  view.  Only  the  emphasis  is  different ;  and  also 
the  extent  to  which  each  carries  its  endeavor  to  realize  its  own 
somewhat  peculiar  ideals. 

We  shall  then  understand  better  the  true  nature  of  philoso- 
phy if  we  consider  more  closely  the  relations  in  which  it  stands 
to  the  particular  sciences.  And  here  the  first  thing  to  notice 
is  the  important  and  even  essential  and  permanent  resemblances 
of  the  two.  As  has  already  been  indicated,  both  science  and 
philosophy  arise  in  the  rational,  human  impulse  to  understand 
— that  is,  to  explain  and  interpret — the  totality  of  human  expe- 
rience. In  their  most  successful  form,  both  must  largely  employ 
the  same  method  of  carefully  guarded  and  systematic  reflective 
thinking.  In  order,  however,  to  separate  between  the  two,  and 
thus  to  establish  in  its  more  modern  form  the  claim  for  philoso- 
phy to  have  a  place  among  the  intellectual  and  practical  inter- 
ests of  the  race,  as  a  somewhat  independent  discipline,  it  is 
necessary  to  emphasize  further  certain  of  their  more  important 
differences.  At  the  same  time,  it  can  scarcely  be  too  often 
repeated  that  these  differences,  no  matter  how  much  they  are 
accentuated  by  the  progress  of  both,  can  never  render  science 
and  philosophy  more  than  relatively  independent  of  each  other. 
In  the  first  place,  then,  the  particular  sciences  are  distinguished 
from  philosophy,  by  their  standing  in  a  more  intimate  relation 
to  the  phenomena,  or  facts  of  experience,  and  to  the  formulaa 


10  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

which  express  the  relations  ascertained  to  exist,  with  more  or 
less  of  uniformity,  among  the  phenomena.  It  is  by  selecting 
certain  groups  and  orders  of  these  phenomena,  and  by  making 
of  them  a  special  study,  that  the  so-called  particular  sciences 
come  to  exist.  They  are  also  sometimes  called  positive  sciences, 
because  they  are  supposed  to  limit  themselves  to  undeniable 
affirmations  of  fact,  abjuring  all  metaphysics  or  appeal  to  occult 
causes  and  to  other  doubtful  sources  of  explanation.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  no  form  of  human  knowledge  can 
render  itself  strictly  "  particular,"  or  separate  from  other 
branches  of  scientific  endeavor.  Each  part  is  part  of  a  whole. 
The  universe  is  that  whole;  and  every  particular  science  soon 
finds  itself  involved  with  phenomena,  and  confronted  by  prob- 
lems, which  belong  almost  equally  to  the  domain  cultivated 
by  some  other  particular  science.  Physics  and  chemistry  can- 
not be  kept  wholly  apart;  chemistry  is  part  of  biology;  biology 
is  complicated  with  psychology;  anthropology  and  sociology 
cannot  be  cultivated  except  in  dependence  upon  psychology; 
then  follow  such  pursuits  as  literature,  history,  law,  theology, 
etc.,  which,  whether  we  call  them  sciences  or  not,  are  less  "  par- 
ticular "  and  "  positive,"  because  of  their  sharing  in  so  many 
and  such  complex  groupings  of  inter-related  phenomena.  No 
wonder,  then,  that  there  has  never  been  any  agreement  reached 
as  to  a  special  scheme  for  the  strict  classification  of  all  the 
so-called  sciences.  No  wonder  that  the  modern  scientific  expert 
strives  to  specialize  in  the  knowledge  of  some  limited  class  of 
phenomena,  while  at  the  same  time  paying  respectful  attention 
to  what  other  experts  have  to  say  about  facts  and  laws  in  parts 
overlapping  his  own,  but  in  which  these  others  have  chosen  to 
erect  claims  to  special  expert  knowledge.  In  fact,  no  mining 
district  in  the  West  is  more  confused  in  respect  of  superficial 
and  underground  claims,  both  legitimajtely  "staked  out"  and 
also  "  jumped,"  than  are  the  fields  of  modern  science. 

Now,  modern  philosophy  does  not  invade  this  field  with  any 
claim  to  a  special  part  of  it  as  its  very  own.    It  is  not  a  "  par- 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS  11 

ticular"  science;  above  all  it  is  not  "positive,"  in  the  posi- 
tivistic  meaning  of  this  much-abiised  word.  It  is  general;  it 
aims  to  be  universal.  This,  too,  must  not  be  understood  as  a 
claim  to  possess  or  to  dominate  the  fields  belonging  to  the 
different  sciences.  The  philosopher  does  not  aspire  to  be  the 
president  of  a  syndicate  which  shall  have  bought  up,  or 
grabbed,  all  of  the  separate  mining  claims.  On  the  contrary, 
he  just  wishes  to  know  how  much,  and  what,  genuine  product — 
pure  gold,  etc. — has  been  extracted  and  coined  from  them  all. 
To  translate  the  figure  of  speech :  Modern  philosophy,  in  its 
effort  to  vindicate  its  right  to  an  important  place  in  the  in- 
fellectual  and  practical  interests  of  the  race,  is  a  humble  in- 
quirer, sitting  at  the  feet  cf  the  particular  sciences.  It  has  laid 
aside  its  former  pride  of  superior  lineage  and  larger  heritage. 
Indeed,  the  aspect  of  modest  confidence  and  half -expressed  awe 
with  which  many  youthful  philosophers  are  looking  up,  as  into 
the  face  of  some  divinity,  toward  the  "scientist,"  to  catch  his 
approving  though  somewhat  scornful  smile,  is  not  by  any 
means  always  justified  by  the  certainties  of  modern  science  as 
contrasted  with  the  uncertainties  of  ancient  philosophy.  But 
the  would-be  philosopher  who  knows  his  business  is  well  aware 
that  the  attempt  to  deduce  the  facts  and  laws  of  the  positive 
sciences  from  some  form  of  a  theory  of  the  Idea,  or  of  the  Ab- 
solute, must  be  forever  abandoned.  Such  an  one  knows  also 
that  philosophy  must  take  the  world  as  science  finds  it.  For 
it  is  the  real  world,  and  not  any  merely  conjectured  or  might- 
be  world,  which  philosophy  desires  to  help  science  more  pro- 
foundly to  explain,  more  fully  and  satisfactorily  to  interpret. 
And  since  the  philosopher  cannot  possibly  become  an  expert 
knower  at  first  hand  in  every  branch  of  human  knowledge,  can- 
not carefully  survey  all  the  groups  of  phenomena,  subject  them, 
wherever  intrinsically  possible,  to  experimental  testing,  and 
formulate  the  uniform  sequences  and  causal  relations  existing 
between  them;  he  gratefully  receives  all  this  at  the  hands  of 
the  most  competent  authorities.     Even  in  this  way,  if  he  aims 


12  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

at  the  completeness  of  the  true  philosophical  ideal,  his  task  is 
infinitely  complex,  and  destined  to  ceaseless  undoing, — although 
it  may  be  only  partial, — and  to  doing  over  again  in  better 
form  by  other  hands.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that  philosophy, 
like  science,  is  an  affair  of  development,  the  conclusion  of 
which  cannot  be  foreseen  in  time;  and  the  final  form  of  which 
cannot  be  predicted  with  precision.  Hence  the  need  which 
modern  philosophy  has  of  the  particular  sciences  in  their  mod- 
ern.form  is  urgent  and  indispensable.  So  far  forth,  philosophy 
is  absolutely  dependent  upon  the  particular  sciences  for  the 
material  which  it  assumes  to  treat  by  the  method  of  reflective 
thinking,  in  order  to  vindicate  its  own  right  to  be  regarded  by 
these  sciences  as  of  important  interest  to  them  all. 

Not  only  for  its  material,  but  for  its  method  also,  modern 
philosopliy  is  largely  indebted  to  the  particular  sciences,  as  they 
are  themselves  cultivated  in  modern  form.  Philosophical 
speculation,  which  has  its  head  in  heaven  or  in  the  clouds, 
without  having  its  feet  upon  the  ground,  is  no  longer  tolerable. 
But  it  cannot  be  forgotten  that  the  methods  of  the  particular 
sciences  are  themselves  a  comparatively  modern  affair.  When 
science  and  philosophy  were  more  frankly  mixed,  or  uncon- 
sciously muddled,  than  they  now  are,  unverifiable  conjecture  or 
groundless  speculation  were  thought  quite  adequate  to  estab- 
lish the  opinions  of  each  in  the  minds  of  the  majority  of  the 
devotees  of  both.  And  if  science  is  at  present  more  insistent 
upon  method  than  is  philosophy,  this  may  be  due  quite  as  much 
to  differences  in  the  intrinsic  character  of  the  two  pursuits  as  to 
differences  in  the  spirit  and  temper  of  those  who  pursue  them. 

Doubtless,  in  modern  times  the  tables  seem  to  have  been 
completely  turned  against  philosophy.  And,  indeed,  it  is  not 
Positivism  alone,  of  the  more  formal  sort,  which  proposes  en- 
tirely to  dispense  with  philosophy.  Plainly  its  divinity  is  much 
hedged  in,  wherever  it  is  not  wholly  dethroned.  Just  about 
as  plainly,  this  distrust  and  contempt  are  largely  the  fault  of 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS  13 

philosopliers  themselves.  For  the  "mother  of  the  sciences  "  has 
been  as  much  discredited  by  the  mob  of  the  immature  and 
unscrupulous  within  her  household,  as  have  the  particular  sci- 
ences which  owe  to  her  so  largely  their  birth  and  early  nurture. 
Perhaps  the  proportion  of  quacks  is  no  greater  in  the  one  than 
in  the  other.  At  any  rate,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  phi- 
losophy has  suffered  in  the  loss  of  consideration  and  prestige, 
even  more  than  have  the  sciences,  from  sensationalism  and  the 
attempt  to  be  interesting  without  being  careful  of  exactness  and 
truthfulness,  as  setting  the  standards  of  the  highest  success. 
Just  as  we  once  heard  one  of  the  world's  greatest  mathema- 
ticians say  that  no  person  ought  to  deal  with  the  conceptions  and 
formulas  of  the  higher  mathematics,  who  did  not  appreciate  and 
revel  in  their  beauty ;  so  do  we  think  that  no  one  has  any  busi- 
ness to  undertake  the  technical  pursuit  of  philosophy  who  does 
not  have,  and  keep,  the  serious  and  reverent  spirit  toward  its 
conceptions  and  its  problems.  If  there  is  any  kind  of  human 
undertaking  for  which  one  ought  to  prepare  one's  self  by  think- 
ing soberly,  long,  and  hard,  it  is  writing  or  speaking  on  phi- 
losophy. 

It  is  only  necessary,  however,  to  understand,  even  super- 
ficially, the  nature  and  achievements  of  the  modern  so-called 
positive  sciences,  in  order  to  discover  how  the  tables  may  again 
be  turned.  For,  indeed,  their  need  of  more  sound  philosophy 
is  very  evident  and  very  great.  In  fact,  the  whole  body  of 
them  is  either  penetrated  with,  or  incorporated  of,  the  products 
of  reflective  thinking, — and  this,  in  philosophy's  most  despised 
branch  of  metaphysics.  That  this  is  necessarily  so,  and  how  it 
is  so,  will  be  made  clearer  when  we  come  to  treat  of  metaphy- 
sics as  including  every  assumption,  however  unverifiable,  and 
every  theory,  however  scientific,  which  deals  with  the  nature  and 
relations  of  what  we  call  "  real,"  or  "  actual,"  whether  of 
things  or  of  minds.  Even  to  mention  this  fact  with  regard  to 
the  most  ordinary  and  approved  doings  of  the  workmen  in  the 


14  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

different  particular  sciences  is  to  call  attention  to  two  impor- 
tant offices  for  science  in  general  which  philosophy  may  fulfill. 
In  the  first  place,  it  may  criticize  the  categories,  or  fundamental 
conceptions  of  the  particular  sciences.  In  the  second  place,  it 
may  criticize  the  syntheses  of  the  particular  sciences,  and  may 
supplement  them  by,  or  even  substitute  for  them,  syntheses 
of  its  own. 

How  naively,  and  even  confusedly,  current  scientific  con- 
ceptions are  employed,  becomes  abundantly  evident  to  the 
most  superficial  inquirer.  In  vain  have  the  authors  of  scien- 
tific treatises  striven  hitherto  in  their  efforts  to  agree  pre- 
cisely upon  what  they  mean  by  their  terms  as  applied  to 
actual  events  and  real  existences.  The  right  of  each  author 
or  investigator  in  science  or  philosophy  to  define  for  him- 
self the  conceptions  which  he  proposes  consistently  to  at- 
tach to  the  terms  he  uses,  need  not  be  contested.  But  the 
claim  that  he  is  using  them  in  the  way  most  appropriate 
to  the  correct  functioning  of  the  human  mind,  and  to  the 
truths  of  nature's  processes  and  laws,  always  admits  of  fur- 
ther critical  examination.  Moreover,  the  underlying  as- 
sumption of  the  student  of  any  positive  science  is  that  his 
conceptions  and  conclusions  may  be  brought  into  some  kind 
of  harmony  with  the  conceptions  and  conclusions  of  the  students 
of  other  and  kindred  positive  sciences.  If,  therefore,  science 
will  undertake,  and  carry  to  a  successful  issue,  the  criticism 
of  its  own  categories,  with  all  the  metaphysical  implicates 
which  these  categories  involve,  no  one  else  should  greet  the 
achievement  with  so  supreme  satisfaction  as  the  devotee  of 
philosophy.  But  such  work  of  criticism  requires  a  profound 
knowledge  of  psychology,  logic,  the  theory  of  knowledge,  and 
metaphysics.  And  why  a  mind  equally  gifted  and  equally 
studious  should  not  acquire,  by  life-long  devotion,  some  tech- 
nical skill  and  superiority  of  method  and  achievement,  in  these 
subjects,  as  well  as  in  those  treated  by  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences,  it  is  difficult  to  see.    We  conclude,  then,  that  modern 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  I'ROIiLKMS  15 

science  pre-eminently  needs  modern  philosophy  for  tiie  criti- 
cism of  its  own  (as  of  all)  categories. 

Another  urgent  need  of  philosophy  by  science  is  closely  con- 
nected with  the  foregoing.  The  positive  sciences  do  not  stop, 
and  ought  not  to  stop,  to  consider  the  nature,  laws,  limits  and 
guaranty  of  all  knowledge.  They  have  neither  the  right,  nor 
the  duty,  to  be  sceptical  as  to  the  possibility  of  discovering  the 
actual  facts  and  true  causes  {vcrae  causae)  of  what  they  regard 
as  an  "  external "  and  independently  existent  "  Nature."  The 
proper  scientific  attitude  toward  natural  phenomena  is  one  of 
naive  trust  or  unquestioning  confidence.  To  express  it  in  more 
strictly  philosophical  terms,  the  scientific  attitude  toward  nat- 
ural phenomena  is  that  of  common-sense  realism.  But  all  the 
assumptions  of  this  attitude,  and  all  its  conclusions  with  refer- 
ence to  the  essential  nature  and  ultimate  meaning  of  the  phy- 
sical universe,  are  profoundly  afTected  by  the  opinions  which 
one  holds  with  regard  to  the  nature,  laws,  limits,  and  guaranty 
of  all  knowledge.  A  critical  investigation  here  is  undertaken 
by  another  branch  of  philosophy,  which  calls  itself  epistemology, 
or  theory  of  knowledge. 

Thus  far  we  have  confined  the  consideration  of  the  rela- 
tions of  science  and  philosophy  to  the  natural  and  physical 
sciences,  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  these  terms.  In  the 
more  genial,  but  defensible  meaning  of  the  word  "  science," 
however,  there  is  a  large  class  of  the  so-called  psychological 
and  ethical  sciences  with  which  philosophy  has  even  more  im- 
portant and  mutually  helpful  relations.  In  all  these  cases,  the 
remoter  relations  are  mediated  by  the  intimate  and  essential 
relations  which  exist  between  philosophy,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  psychology  and  ethics,  on  the  other.  Indeed,  it  is  only 
until  very  recently,  and  even  now  not  at  all  universally,  or  in 
any  case  very  successfully,  that  the  effort  has  been  made  to  cul- 
tivate psychology  and  philosophy  apart.  Locke's  Essay  has  been 
pronounced — however  without  warrant — "  the  most  important 
offspring  of  modern  philosophy."     And  even  since  the  time  of 


16  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Locke,  in  England  and  Scotland,  psychology  and  philosophy 
have  been  inextricably  mixed.  The  same  thing  has  been 
scarcely  less  true  in  Germany.  Even  Herbart,  who  initiated 
one  of  the  most  fruitful  attempts  to  subject  mental  phenomena 
to  a  strictly  scientific  treatment,  declares :  "  The  whole  series 
of  the  forms  of  experience  must  be  investigated  twice  over, 
metaphysically  and  psychologically.  Both  investigations  must 
be  side  by  side,  and  be  compared  together  long  enough  for  every 
one  to  see  their  complete  difference  so  plainly  as  never  to  be 
in  danger  of  confusing  them  again."  But  in  saying  this, 
Herbart  meant  that  mental  phenomena,  in  their  appearance  in 
consciousness,  differ  as  greatly  from  their  true  causes,  their  real 
explanations,  as  physical  appearances  do  from  the  atoms,  ions, 
and  invisible  forces,  which  are  evoked  in  their  explanation. 
Wundt,  also,  the  chief  figure  in  modern  experimental  psychol- 
ogy, has  declared  the  relation  of  this  science  to  philosophy  to  be 
so  close  and  peculiar  that  "  the  partition  of  sovereignty  between 
the  two  is  an  abstract  scheme  which,  in  the  presence  of  actual- 
ity, always  appears  unsatisfactory."  The  extreme  followers  of 
the  empirical  tendency  in  Germany,  France,  and  America, 
who  have  proclaimed  the  possibility  and  the  necessity  of  a 
science  of  "  psychology  without  a  soul,"  have  invariably  showed 
themselves  in  fact  to  be  just  as  naively  and  crudely  meta- 
physical as  their  brethren  in  the  natural  and  physical  sciences. 
This  is  so  of  necessity;  for  the  presence  of  an  agent — call  it  a 
mind,  soul,  spirit,  or  what  you  will — whose  are  the  phenomena, 
and  who  manifests  its  reality  to  itself  in  and  through  the 
phenomena,  renders  it  absolutely  and  forever  impossible  to  cul- 
tivate a  science  of  psychology  without  the  metaphysical  impli- 
cate of  a  "  soul."  Even  to  use  the  term  science  without  im- 
plying this  inference  from  self-consciousness  is  absurd.  Psy- 
chology may,  however,  behave,  though  with  less  propriety  and 
chance  of  success,  as  physics  and  chemistry  behave.  It  may 
'  accept  the  uncritical  view  of  common-sense  realism,  and  go 
about  its  business  in  the  form  of  discovering  and  concatenat- 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS  17 

ing  the  phenomena.  Even  thus,  however,  all  the  phenomena 
are  to  he  explained  only  in  terms  of  the  self-recognitions  of  a 
so-called  soul. 

The  study  of  ethics,  too,  cannot  free  itself  from  the  obliga- 
tion to  become  a  moral  philosophy.  For  the  study  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  human  conduct, — the  noting,  tabulating,  and  statis- 
tical handling  of  the  customs  and  social  relations  of  men — 
is  not  ethics  at  all.  We  do  not  touch  the  border-land  of 
man's  moral  nature  and  moral  life,  until  we  consider  these 
customs  and  relations  as  themselves  related  to  ideals.  To 
study  what  is  simply, — this  is  not  to  study  ethics.  That-which- 
is  must  be  looked  at  in  the  light  of  human  conceptions  and 
principles  as  to  that-which-ovghi-to-he.  But  this  is  at  once 
to  lift  us  from  what  is  merely  phenomenal  into  the  sphere 
where  the  phenomena  themselves  are  saturated  with  thoughts 
and  sentiments  and  implicates,  having  reference  to  realities 
which,  by  their  very  nature,  cannot  be  given  a  concrete  pre- 
sentation in  consciousness.  The  sources,  underlying  principles, 
and  the  sanctions,  of  these  ideals  afford  unfailing  stimulus 
to,  and  make  unceasing  demands  upon,  the  cultured  insight 
and  disciplined  reflective  thinking  of  the  reflective  mind. 

In  these  and  other  ways  do  all  the  psychological  and  ethical 
sciences  appeal  for  help  to  philosophy.  The  more  complex 
these  sciences  become,  the  more  distinct  and  imperative  is  the 
appeal.  Thus  it  is  still,  and  probably  always  will  be,  more 
correct  to  speak  of  a  philosophy  of  literature,  a  philosophy  of 
history,  a  philosophy  of  art,  than  to  speak,  with  any  strictness, 
of  a  science  of  either  of  these  subjects.  Even  that  conglomerate 
-of  scientific  fragments  which  is  called  "  sociology,"  or  by  some 
similar  name,  is  much  more  dependent  on  psychology  and  on 
ethics  for  any  approach  to  an  independent  scientific  form,  than 
upon  the  application  of  scientific  method  to  any  separable 
groups  of  phenomena 

There  is  a  second  important  respect  in  which  the  particular 
sciences,  both  the  physical  and  the  psychological  and  moral, 


18  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

are  in  need  of  philosophy.  This  is  for  the  undertaking  of 
the  supremely  difficult,  and  indeed  never  to  be  completed,  task 
of  attempting  a  synthesis  of  human  knowledge.  The  hope  of 
making  a  speculative  leap  to  the  height  of  that  one  Principle, 
or  indissoluble  corporation  of  principles,  from  which  we  may 
deduce  with  a  quasi-mathematical  certainty,  the  explanation  of 
all  human  experience — whether  this  hope  be  turned  toward 
the  scientific  imagination  for  its  latest  and  most  perfect  con- 
struction of  the  Ether,  or  to  theological  faith  for  its  most 
rational  conception  of  God — may  quite  properly  be  abandoned. 
If  it  is  the  province  of  either  science  or  philosophy  ever  to 
realize  this  hope,  its  actualization  is  obviously  to  be  indefinitely 
delayed.  It  may  be  that  there  is  no  such  principle  in  reality. 
Indeed,  the  picture  of  an  ever-developing  Universe,  as  well  as 
the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Person,  is  not  favorable  to  so 
machine-like  a  process.  That  is  no  genuine  development  which 
contains  all  in  the  first;  that  is  no  true  person,  who  predes- 
tines all  by  one  act  of  Will. 

All  the  particular  sciences  strive,  however,  to  gather  together 
their  discoveries  in  some  unifying  way;  they  aim  to  reduce  to 
the  smallest  number  the  kinds  of  entities,  the  efficient  causes, 
the  formulas  called  laws,  or  principles,  with  which  they  have 
to  deal.  In  a  word,  they  aim  at  unification,  at  synthesis.  They 
are  jealous  of  differences  and  contradictions;  they  abhor  gaps 
and  inconsistencies;  they  are  provoked  and  stimulated  by  ex- 
ceptions; they  feel  in  duty  bound  to  expand  their  formulas,  to 
modify  their  hypotheses,  and  even  to  alter  their  conceptions  of 
law,  when  newly  discovered  and  incompatible  phenomena  seem 
to  demand  this.  In  their  relations  with  one  another,  however, 
the  attempt  to  reconcile  differences,  to  adjust  claims,  and  by 
introducing  some  larger  measure  of  harmony,  to  approach  with 
better  spirit,  if  not  with  larger  success,  the  higher  and  highest 
possible  forms  of  synthesis,  is  not  an  easy  task  for  the  scien- 
tific mind.  As  we  have  already  said,  it  is  not  an  easy  task, 
but  a  supremely  difficult  task,  for  any  form  of  reflective  think- 
ing.    If,  however,  the  student  of  philosophy,  in  its  historical 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  CONCEPTION  AND  PROBLEMS  19 

development  and  in  its  scientific  foundations,  is  not  somehow 
especially  qualified  for  undertaking  this  task,  then  the  fault 
is  his  own  personal  fault.  For  the  philosophical  spirit  and  the 
study  of  philosophy  are  the  best  possible  preparation  for  making 
such  difficult  speculative  syntheses. 

It  would  seem  plain,  then,  that  modern  science  and  mod- 
ern philosophy  are  reciprocally  dependent,  and  in  constant 
need,  each  of  the  other.  Philosophy  needs  the  spirit  that  ap- 
plies the  scientific  method  to  all  the  ascertained  truths  and 
verifiable  conceptions,  which  the  particular  sciences  can  impart. 
These  sciences,  in  turn,  need  philosophy  as  the  teacher  of  psy- 
chology, logic,  and  ethics,  as  the  critic  of  their  fundamental 
conceptions  and  underlying  assumptions;  and  as  an  aid  to  har- 
mony and  unification  of  the  facts  and  laws  which  are  the  more 
special  possession  of  each.  And  if  science  and  philosophy,  in 
these  modern  times,  do  not  actually  fraternize  and  greatly  as- 
sist each  other,  the  fault  and  the  disgrace  cannot  be  charged 
to  the  nature  of  either,  but  must  be  laid  at  the  door  of  certain 
ignorant  and  crabbed  students  of  both. 

The  attempt  has  customarily  been  made  to  render  the  defi- 
nition of  philosophy  clearer  by  stating  it  in  terms  of  the  solu- 
tion of  some  one  Problem.  This  attempt,  too,  has  led  to  no 
little  confusion.  For  the  inquiry,  "What  is  the  Problem  of 
Philosophy  ?  "  admits  of  as  many  different  answers  as  there  are 
different  views  concerning  the  nature,  sources,  and  method 
of  ptiilosophy.  Of  course,  its  problem,  since  its  method  is  that 
of  reflective  thinking  upon  the  facts  and  laws  of  human  ex- 
perience, is  one  of  explanation  and  interpretation.  But  all 
the  problems  of  the  particular  sciences  have  a  similar  end  in 
view.  Thus  science  and  philosophy  agree  in  their  effort  to 
investigate  the  grounds  of  Being  and  of  Knowledge;  and  thus, 
more  and  more,  to  make  the  organism  of  human  thinking  a 
faithful  representative  of  the  organism  of  the  world. 

It  would  seem  more  profitable,  then,  to  speak  of  the  prob- 
lems of  philosophy,  and  to  postpone  for  the  present  the  attempt 
to  summarize  them  all  in  the  statement  of  one  supreme  and 


20  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY^ 

all-inclusive  problem.  This  may  be  done  in  dependence  upon 
the  distinctions  already  made,  which,  however,  only  suggest 
the  vague  and  movable  boundaries  between  the  fields  of  the 
modern  particular  sciences  and  the  domain  claimed  as  pe- 
culiarly its  own  by  modern  philosophy.  From  this  point  of 
view,  therefore,  we  need  to  recall  what  has  already  been  said 
about  the  relations  between  these  sciences  and  the  attempt  to 
render  philosophy  a  quasi-independent  discipline.  First  of 
all,  then,  there  is  the  Problem  of  Knowledge.  What  is  it  to 
know?  What  can  man  know?  What  view  must  we  take  of  the 
claims  of  Dogmatism,  Scepticism,  Criticism,  and  Agnosticism — 
of  all  the  more  prominent  attitudes  of  the  human  mind  in 
respect  to  a  theory  of  cognition?  Inseparably  correlated  with 
this,  and  indeed  a  sort  of  other  side  to  the  same  shield,  is 
the  so-called  Problem  of  Being,  which  is  proposed  by  the  naive 
or  reasoned  metaphysics  of  ordinary  knowledge  and  of  the 
positive  sciences.  What  are  the  categories,  or — so  to  say — 
necessary  qualifications  of  a  claim  to  belong  to  the  really  ex- 
istent? How  shall  we  interpret  these  categories,  and  harmon- 
ize them  in  one  Theory  of  Reality,  which  may  be  found  to  be 
really,  though  unconsciously,  assumed  by  all  of  the  particular 
sciences?  There  are,  also,  then,  the  problems  afforded  by  the 
Ideals  of  humanity  in  the  two  principal  forms  of  the  Ideal  of 
Ethics  and  the  Ideal  of  ^Esthetics.  It  will  be  found  that  these 
ideals,  not  only  afford  sources  and  principles  for  the  regulation 
of  human  conduct  and  every  form  of  artistic  endeavor,  but  that 
they  also  interpenetrate  and  largely  control  the  assumptions 
and  inductions  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences.  And, 
finally,  there  is  the  Problem  of  the  so-called  Absolute — that 
supreme  but  never  perfectly  attainable  goal  of  human  endeavor, 
recognized  as  such  by  both  philosophy  and  science.  This  may 
also  be  called  the  Problem  of  the  Ideal-Eeal ;  for  its  solution, 
if  it  could  be  found,  would  help  us  to  interpret  aright  the 
more  nearly  ultimate  meaning  of  the  answer  to  all  the  other 
problems. 


CHAPTER  II 

PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  ITS  DIVISIONS 

The  most  essential  thing  about  the  method  of  philosophy  is 
its  spirit.  Witliout  the  right  spirit  no  high  measure  of  success 
in  philosophizing  can  possibly  be  attained.  It  was  this  thought 
which  the  great  Greek  thinker,  Plato,  forever  embodied  in  the 
very  term  "philosophy."  The  wisdom  {ao(pta)  which  is  iden- 
tical with  absolute  knowledge  (  hncavjurj  ),  belongs  to  God 
alone;  to  man  it  belongs,  the  rather,  to  be  a  lover  of  knowledge. 
And  since  in  Plato's  thought,  philosophy  moved  in  the  sphere 
of  the  Idea,  which  is  the  aesthetically  and  ethically  .perfect  of 
its  kind,  the  highest  in  the  kingdom  of  ideas  is  the  Idea  of  the 
Good.  Therefore  the  true  philosopher  is  he  who  sets  his  affec- 
tions on  what  is  most  real  and  good;  and  the  impulse  to  phi- 
losophize is  a  deep  and  passionate  longing  of  human  nature  to 
have  the  most  intimate  intercourse  with  what  is  noblest  and 
best  in  the  realm  of  truth  and  reality.  The  root  of  philos- 
ophy is  Eros — the  effort  of  mortal  man  to  attain  the  immortal. 
Such  is  the  thought  also  of  some  of  the  Upanishads. 

This  fanciful  and  figurative  way  of  characterizing  the  nature 
of  philosophy  and  the  spirit  which  belongs  to  the  true  philos- 
opher has,  when  translated  into  sober  prose,  been  on  the  whole, 
illustrated  and  enforced  by  its  history.  In  general,  thinkers 
and  writers  on  philosophical  problems  have  regarded  their  task 
as  one  of  high  moral  and  intellectual  concernment.  Oftener 
than  otherwise,  they  have  considered  it  as  arising  from  an  im- 
pulse intimately  related  to  the  sources  of  religious  experience; 
and  they  have  looked  upon  philosophy  itself  as  a  sort  of  hand- 
maid, or  partner,  or  faithful  critic  and  censor,  of  religion. 
In  fact,  also,  the  distinction  between  theology  and  one  of  the 

SI 


22  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

most  important  branches  of  philosophy  cannot  be  defined  or 
practically  enforced.  A  spirit  serious,  impressed  with  the 
mystery  of  the  world  of  external  nature  and  of  human  life, 
passionately — however  fallibly — devoted  to  the  exploration  and 
defense  of  the  most  comprehensive  and  important  truths,  has, 
with  few  exceptions,  qualified  that  distinguished  line  of  thinkers 
who  have  most  influenced  the  reflective  thought  of  the  race. 
Even  where  they  have  been  sharply,  or  perhaps  scornfully,  criti- 
cal of  the  existing  dogmatism  in  morals  and  religion,  the 
display  of  this  temper  has  been  most  frequently  motived  by  the 
true  spirit  of  philosophy.  The  spirit  of  frivolity,  of  conten- 
tion, of  scoffing  criticism  for  its  own  sake,  of  selfish  seeking  for 
distinction,  of  ambition  for  mere  novelty  and  of  bidding  for 
applause,  are  not  the  spirit  of  the  philosopher. 

Briefly  analyzed,  the  true  philosophical  spirit  shows  itself, 
first  of  all,  as  a  spirit  of  freedom.  It  demands  the  rights  of 
reason  absolutely  untrammelled  by  extraneous  bonds  or  obliga- 
tions. But  this  is  because  of  its  faith  that  human  reason  is 
the  organ  of  Divine  Reason,  the  source  of  the  light  that 
"  lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the  world."  In  this  respect, 
at  least,  every  kind  and  school  of  philosophy  is  rationalistic. 
As  Chalybaus  has  well  said,  the  free  critical  movement  which 
prevails  in  all  the  sciences  of  the  day  is  essentially  philosophy. 
It  is  probable,  that  modern  science  owes  its  freedom  more  to 
the  devout  and  truth-loving  heretics,  who  revolted  against  the 
principle  of  extraneous  control  of  reason  by  authority,  than 
to  any  other  class  of  men.  But  the  positive  side  of  this  philo- 
sophical freedom  is  an  obligation  to  examine  critically  all  the 
presuppositions  of  every  particular  form  of  human  knowledge. 
The  obligation  extends  even  to  those  postulates  of  all  reason 
on  which  philosophy  itself  is  founded.  The  end  desired  and 
approached,  however,  is  the  confidence  of  reason  in  itself  pro- 
gressively to  attain  to  truth,  when  open  to  the  Source  of  truth 
and  faithfully  obeying  its  own  laws.  The  freedom  of  philos- 
ophy, therefore,  dofia  not  imply  the  possession  by  reason  of 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  DIVISIONS      23 

the  power  to  be  either  more  or  less  than  liuiiian  reason.  It  is 
chiefly  because  Kant  attacked  this  problem  with  such  dili- 
gence, acuteness  of  criticism,  and  complete  renunciation  of 
previously  existing  authorities,  that  he  took  so  controlling  a 
place  in  the  development  of  modern  philosophy. 

The  spirit  of  philosophy  is  also  one  of  complete  and  unselfish 
devotion  to  truth.  This  spirit  also  it  shares  with  the  best  of 
the  students  of  the  particular  sciences.  Nor  is  the  essential 
duty  to  maintain  such  a  partnership  at  all  abridged  by  the 
undoubted  fact  that  the  professional  teachers  of  both  science 
and  philosophy  have  not  infrequently  had  an  eye  on  their 
own  fame  and  advancement,  or  on  the  security  of  their  ten- 
ure of  office,  and  their  standing  Avith  the  appointing  power, 
rather  than  both  eyes,  with  a  single  heart,  solely  on  the 
truth. 

From  this  spirit  of  devotion  to  truth,  as  in  the  case  of 
science  so  in  the  case  of  philosophy,  there  arises  a  spirit  of 
humility  and  teachableness,  mingled  with  independence.  The 
great  discoverers  in  science  have  in  general  had  this  philosoph- 
ical spirit,  just  as  the  greater  minds  in  philosophy  have  been 
willing  to  sit"  at  the  feet  of  science  and  be  taught  its  discov- 
eries and  learn  the  proper  application  to  their  subjects,  of  the 
so-called  scientific  methods.  Neither  can  afford  to  be  arrogant 
in  the  presence  of  the  other.  It  is  confessedly  true  that  phi- 
losophy must  have  the  humble  and  docile  spirit  toward  science. 
And,  conversely,  there  is  truth  in  Haeckel's  complaint  of  "  the 
lack  of  philosophical  culture  of  most  of  the  physicists  of  the 
day,"  as  of  those  who  "  cherish  the  strange  illusion  that  they 
can  construct  the  edifice  of  natural  science  from  facts  without  a 
philosophical  connection  of  the  same."  For  the  prophecy  of 
Herbart  will  always  come  true :  "  It  cannot  be  otherwise  than 
that  the  neglect  of  philosophy  should  result  in  a  frivolous  or 
perverted  treatment  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  all  the 
sciences."  "With  the  spirit  of  humility  and  teachableness  goes, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  the  spirit  of  patience. 


24  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

For  reasons  such  as  these  the  dependence  of  philosophy  upon 
the  mental  and  moral  characteristics  of  the  philosophical 
thinker  is  especially  close.  More  than  in  any  of  the  particular 
sciences,  it  is  the  man  himself,  as  a  rational  self-conscious 
spirit,  who,  in  philosophy,  chiefly  determines  the  correct  and 
successful  use  of  the  method.  It  follows  from  the  very  nature 
of  philosophy  and  of  its  problems,  that  the  ideal  of  a  com- 
pleted philosophical  system  will  never  be  realized;  but  the  con- 
tribution toward  it  which  every  workman  can  make  depends 
in  no  small  degree  upon  the  wealth  of  his  experience,  matur- 
ing into  personal  character. 

It  must  not  be  concluded,  however,  that  thorough  acquaint- 
ance with,  and  faithful  use  of,  the  proper  philosophical  method 
is  of  small  importance.  This  method  can  be  described  in  its 
main  features  as  being  scientific,  although  it  has  not  the  same 
definite  and  restricted  characteristics  which  belong  to  the 
method  peculiar  to  any  one  of  the  positive  sciences. 

The  methods  of  research  and  of  testing  results,  as  employed 
by  each  of  the  modern  positive  sciences,  are  developments  which 
have  proceeded  hand  in  hand  with  the  developments  that  con- 
stitute the  body  of  truth  ascertained  by  the  same  sciences.  In 
many  of  them,  instruments  constructed  upon  the  principles  of 
the  science,  as  already  discovered,  have  become  indispensable 
for  making  new  discoveries.  This,  for  example,  is  true  of  the 
microscope,  spectroscope,  and  all  the  modern  methods  of 
analysis,  in  the  physico-chemical  sciences;  of  microscope,  cul- 
tures, methods  of  obtaining  and  using  staining  fl.uids,  serums, 
etc.,  in  the  biological  sciences.  Plainly,  we  cannot  speak  of 
the  use  by  philosophy  of  any  similar  forms  of  the  scientific 
method.  The  so-called  "  introspective  method  "  in  psychology, 
which  is  the  indispensable  adjunct  of  every  other  method,  more 
nearly  resembles  the  way  of  arriving  at  conclusions  which  is 
appropriate  to  philosophy.  And,  indeed,  let  the  individual 
thinker  strive  as  he  may  to  free  his  mind  from  prejudice,  and 
to  broaden  and  deepen  his  thoughts  so  as  to  include  all  that  is 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  DIVISIONS       25 

most  profound  and  universal  in  the  experience  of  the  race;  it 
will  still  remain  true  that  the  stamp  of  his  individuality  will 
be  upon  the  results  of  his  philosophizing.  In  some  real  mean- 
ing of  the  words :  Each  man's  philosophy  is  his  very  own. 
But  in  a  similar  meaning  of  the  words:  Each  man's  world  is 
individual,  peculiar,  his  very  own.  In  the  religious  life,  each 
man's  God  is  his  God.  Were  it  not  so,  the  narrowness  and 
pettiness  of  each  individual  series  or  collection  of  uniform  ex- 
periences would  witness  to  the  poverty  of  Reality  and  of  its 
C!  round.  The  temperamental  limitation  of  all  systems  of 
philosophy  is  indeed  a  necessary  characteristic;  but  it  is  by  no 
means  an  unmixed  evil.  For  every  man  must,  in  large  meas- 
ure, find  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  philosophy  as  they 
lie  within  his  own  experience. 

In  these  days,  however,  for  any  individual  thinker  to  at- 
tempt to  evolve  a  system  of  philosophy  from  his  own  "  in- 
sides,"  as  it  were,  is  to  merit  failure  and  even  contempt.  The 
world  is  old;  and  there  is  a  long  history  of  speculative  thinking 
lying  behind  the  men  of  the  present  day.  Again,  the  world  is 
new;  and  this  new  world  which  the  modern  sciences  are  dis- 
closing in  ever-varying  and  increasingly  amazing  forms  and 
proportions,  chiefly  concerns  the  philosopher  of  the  modern 
type.  The  philosopher  aims  to  think  for  others,  and  not  for 
himself  alone.  The  rather,  does  he  aim  by  his  thinking  to  stimu- 
late and  guide  others  to  think  for  themselves,  with  a  genuine 
philosophical  spirit,  over  the  problems  which  belong  in  some 
special  way  within  the  philosophical  domain.  He  must,  there- 
fore, prepare  himself  with  even  greater  care  than  is  demanded 
of  one  who  aspires  to  be  a  discoverer  and  leader  in  any  of  the 
particular  sciences. 

There  are  three  classes  of  studies,  an  acquaintance  with 
which  is  requisite  for  the  successful  use  of  method  in  philoso- 
phizing. The  first  of  these  is  so-called  "rational  psychology,'* 
or  the  philosophy  of  mind.  Experimental  psychology  has  no 
special  affiliations  with  philosophy,  or  special  value  as  an  equip- 


26  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ment  for  the  successful  pursuit  of  philosophy.  It  is,  the  rather, 
allied  with  the  physical  and  natural  sciences.  But  the  more 
ultimate  problems  raised  when  one  inquires  as  to  the  existence 
and  nature  of  the  soul,  and  as  to  the  soul's  relation  to  the 
body  and  to  the  external  world,  are  not  only  in  themselves 
considered,  among  the  most  profound  of  philosophical  prob- 
lems, but  they  are  also  metaphysical  inquiries  of  such  a  nature 
that  one's  attitude  toward  them  essentially  influences,  if  it  does 
not  strictly  determine,  one's  conclusions  with  regard  to  all  the 
problems  of  philosophy.  The  reason  that  is  in  you  and  me  is 
indeed  our  own;  but  it  is  also  our  share  in  the  universal  rea- 
son. 

The  second  subject  with  which  the  would-be  philosopher 
must  be  familiar  in  order  to  make  the  best  use  of  method  in 
philosophizing,  is  the  history  of  philosophy.  There  is  no  in- 
tellectual interest  of  the  race, — not  even  any  one  of  the  most 
positive  of  the  sciences, — which  can  be  understood,  much  less 
cultivated,  in  its  larger  aspects,  without  an  acquaintance  with 
its  history.  If,  for  example,  the  modern  physicist  could  be 
made  to  appreciate  how,  in  the  historical  development  of  his 
science,  the  vain  attempt  has  been  frequently  made,  to  explain 
the  phenomena  while  dispensing  with  either  of  the  three  cate- 
gories of  "  Substance,"  "  Force,"  and  "  Law,"  he  would  not 
be  so  likely  to  contribute  one  more  effort  to  the  same  inevitable 
result  of  failure.  Entity  theories,  that  have  no  dynamics  in 
them;  dynamical  theories  that  deny  substantial  existences; 
and  both,  when  they  overlook  the  immanence  of  mind; — all 
three  are  refuted  by  the  history  of  physics.  More  emphatically 
true  is  this  certainty  of  failure  when  any  system  of  philosophy 
neglects  to  take  account  of  either  of  those  greater  truths,  the 
exclusive  or  too  emphatic  recognition  of  which,  has  given  rise 
to  the  endless  succession  of  schools  in  philosophy.  Some  few 
such  works  have  indeed  had  the  characteristics  of  those  great 
pieces  of  literature  to  which  the  race  has  attached  the  rare  fame 
of  securing  a  value  for  all  time.     But  most  have  resembled  the 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  DIVISIONS       27 

modern  novel,  which  becomes  popular  by  pandering  to  the  crav- 
ing for  sensationalism,  and  is  the  more  quickly  thrown  aside 
when  it  ceases  to  satisfy  even  this  craving. 

The  study  of  the  works  of  the  masters  in  philosophy,  and 
the  tracing  of  the  currents  of  reflective  thinking  as  they  have 
swept  back  and  forth,  or  have  stagnated  in  certain  quarters, 
is  part  of  the  preparation  essential  to  the  modern  method  of 
philosophizing.  Our  philosophy  to-day  is  only  to-day's  frag- 
ment of  the  reflective  thinking  of  the  race.  The  historical  and 
pragmatic  view  of  man's  development  in  reflective  thinking  is 
a  necessary  organ  of  philosophical  research. 

An  acquaintance  with  the  particular  sciences  in  their  modern 
form  is  the  third  requisite  for  the  successful  pursuit  of  philos- 
ophy. This  must  be  understood,  however,  with  many  grains  of 
allowance.  With  the  endless  details  and  technical  methods 
of  these  sciences,  it  is  an  impossible  task  for  any  human  mind 
to  keep  up  even  a  superficial  acquaintance.  Indeed,  to  attempt 
the  task  would  render  one  unfit  for  the  successful  pursuit  of 
philosophy.  But  it  is  not  with  these  details  and  technical 
methods  that  philosophy  chiefly  concerns  itself.  Philosophy's 
concern  is  rather  with  the  underlying  assumptions  of  all  human 
science,  and  with  its  most  general  categories  and  principles.  To 
learn  these,  as  has  already  been  explained,  philosophy  sits  at 
the  feet  of  the  sciences,  in  a  humble,  teachable,  and  patient, 
but  free  critical  spirit. 

It  has  already  been  repeatedly  affirmed  that  the  method 
characteristic  of  philosophy  is  the  extent  and  thoroughness 
with  which  it  makes  use  of  the  mind's  powers  of  rational  re- 
flection. This  vague  statement  may  be  still  further  defined  by 
speaking  of  the  method  of  philosophy  as  both  analytic  and  syn- 
thetic. The  analytic  part  of  philosophical  discipline  concerns 
itself  chiefly  with  the  collection  and  critical  sifting  of  material. 
This  material  comes  from  the  three  sources  of  rational  psy- 
chology, the  history  of  philosophy,  and  the  particular  sciences 
on  the  side  of  their  postulates  and  most  general  conceptions 


28  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  principles.  In  philosophizing  we  discern,  select,  and  freely 
criticize  as  much  as  possible  of  this  material. 

But  attempts  at  synthesis  follow  the  work  of  analysis;  and 
the  conceptions,  truths,  and  principles  discovered  by  analysis 
are  the  ground  of  standing  from  which,  so  to  say,  the  syn- 
thesis of  philosophy  takes  its  flight.  Just  as  all  the  particular 
sciences  aim  at  a  harmonizing  synthesis,  which  shall  accom- 
plish a  more  complete  appearance  of  unity  within  each  one's 
allotted  sphere,  so  does  philosophy  aim  at  a  still  higher  and 
more  completely  harmonizing  synthesis,  which  may  result  in  the 
semblance  of  a  unity  covering  all  their  particular  spheres. 
Every  time  science  speaks  of  a  Universe,  a  Nature,  or  a  World 
which  is  in  any  manner  or  measure  One,  it  gives  the  hint  of 
a  similar  attempt  at  synthesis.  Philosophy  aims  to  expose 
the  content  of  this  Unity;  to  show  how,  in  more  precise  man- 
ner and  larger  measure,  this  "  Universe,"  this  "  Nature,"  this 
"  World,"  may  be  conceived  of  as  really  one. 

In  a  word,  then,  the  method  of  philosophy  may  be  described 
as  an  attempt  by  reflective  thinking  at  the  highest  and  most 
complete  synthesis  of  principles,  based  upon  the  most  thorough 
and  exhaustive  analysis. 

The  division  of  the  different  intellectual  interests  of  human- 
ity, and  of  their  products,  depends  upon  the  deflnition  of  each, 
and  upon  the  method  employed  in  the  cultivation  of  each. 
Thus  the  proper  classification  of  the  positive  sciences  still 
affords  a  problem  to  be  fought  over  by  those  who,  for  the  most 
part,  prefer  logical  arrangement  to  substantial  knowledge.  The 
same  thing  is  true,  in  only  smaller  degree,  of  the  so-much  con- 
tested method  of  making  divisions,  or  fence-lines,  between 
these  sciences;  and  of  breaking  up  into  small  allotments  the 
larger  domains  previously  assigned  to  each.  But  nature  does 
not  draw  fixed  lines  for  the  classification  of  her  products, 
whether  Things  or  Minds;  and  her  seemingly  most  reasonable 
achievements  do  not  easily  submit  to  a  logical  schematizing. 
"Divide  and  rule,"  is  indeed  a  well-worn  maxim  for  the  stu- 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  DIVISIONS      29 

dent  of  physical  and  vital  processes;  but  for  science,  the  divid- 
ing is  profitable,  not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
concentration  and  increase  of  intensity  which  the  limitation 
permits.  Indeed,  excessive  attention  to  mere  classifying  tends 
to  pettiness  and  to  an  exaggeration  of  the  value  of  specializa- 
tion rather  than  to  the  gaining  of  a  firm  grasp  upon  those 
greater  problems  of  science,  toward  the  solution  of  which  all  the 
particular  sciences  have  their  contribution  to  make.  Too  fre- 
quently, also,  it  arises  out  of  an  ambition  on  the  part  of  the 
so-called  discoverer  to  signalize  the  distinction  with  his  own 
name. 

What  is  true  of  division  between  and  within  the  particular 
sciences  is  true — although  to  a  less  extent — of  the  Divisions 
of  Philosophy.  But  there  cannot  easily  be  quite  the  same  con- 
fusion and  debate  over  this  subject  as  over  the  classification 
of  the  particular  sciences.  For  the  details  of  the  actual  world 
— the  infinite  variety  and  cross-divisions,  the  seeming  cross- 
purposes  and  baffling  contradictions,  of  Reality — have  already 
been  reduced  to  some  order  when  they  are  handed  over  for 
further  reflection  by  science  to  philosophy.  Thus  philosophy 
escapes  many  of  the  annoyances  and  perplexities  which  fol- 
low from  continuous  wranglings  over  the  often  unimportant 
matter  of  making  divisions. 

For  our  part,  we  take  little  interest  in  debate  about  the  best 
method  of  arranging  the  several  groups  of  philosophical  ques- 
tions; and  we  have  no  disposition  at  all  to  quarrel  with  any 
one  who  prefers  a  different  arrangement  from  our  own.  While 
we  cannot  wholly  agree  with  Lotze  when  he  says  that  each  one 
of  these  groups  "  appears  to  be  self-coherent  and  to  require  an 
investigation  of  a  specific  kind  " ;  we  are  entirely  of  his  opinion 
that  "  little  value "  is  to  be  attributed  "  to  the  reciprocal  ar- 
rangement of  the  single  groups  under  one  another."  The  history 
of  the  subject  shows,  however,  that  certain  great  divisions  have 
been  recognized  from  the  beginning  of  systematic  philosophy 
down  to  the  present  time.    It  also  throws  light  upon  the  fun- 


30  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

damental  and  unchanging  truth  that  the  principles  of  Being 
and  of  Knowledge  may  be  treated  as  giving  rise  to  two  some- 
wduit  distinct  groups  of  problems;  and  yet  that  these  groups  are 
everywhere  in  contact,  and  are  dependent  for  their  life  and 
formative  energy  upon  each  other,  at  many  vital  points.  Still 
further:  In  both  the  realm  of  physical  nature  and  the  realm 
of  thought,  man  recognizes  the  influence,  and  the  presence  in 
concrete  form,  of  ideals.  The  distinction  which  is  thus  forced 
upon  our  consideration,  between  the  fact  of  what-is  and  the 
idea  of  what-ought-to-be,  has  also  served  as  a  basis  for  another 
way  of  arranging  the  groups  of  philosophical  problems. 

It  is  only,  then,  as  a  matter  of  convenience  that  the  fol- 
lowing Divisions  of  Philosophy,  or  groupings  of  its  inter-re- 
lated problems,  are  proposed  in  the  form  of  a  Table: 

I.  Philosophy     of      the  II.  Philosophy     of     the 

Real:       Metaphysics,  Ideal:    Idealology,  or 

in    the    wider    mean-  Rational  Teleology, 

ing   of    the   terra,    as  1.  Ethics,       or       Moral 

belonging   to   all   the  Philosophy    (the 

particular  sciences.  Ideal     of     Conduct, 

1,  Theory      of      Knowl-  sometimes     called 
edge    (Epistemology).  Practical  Philosophy) 

2.  .(Esthetics   (the  Ideal 

2.  Metaphysics,   as   On-  of  Art) 

tology.  HI.  The  Supreme  Ideal- 

A.  Philosophy     of     Na-  Real,  The  Absolute, 

ture.  The    Final    Problem    of 

Synthetic  Philosophy, 


B.  Philosophy  of  Mind. 


— especially  in  the 
form  of  Philosophy 
of  Religion. 


And  now  dropping  all  technicalities,  let  us  gather  together 
and  express  in  more  popular  form,  the  results  of  our  inquiry 
into  the  sources,  nature,  method  and  divisions  of  philosophy. 
The  roots  of  the  impulses  which  have  led  in  comparatively 
modern  times  to  the  attempt  at  cultivating  systematic  philos- 
ophy as  an  intellectual  interest  separate  from  the  particular  sci- 
ences, lie  deep  in  human  nature.  They  are  so  deep  as  to  be 
ineradicable.     The  brain  of  humanity  would  have  to  be  reor- 


PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  METHOD  AND  DIVISIONS      31 

ganized,  the  heart  of  humanity  torn  asunder,  and  the  life- 
blood  cooled  in  its  veins,  in  order  wholly  to  destroy  these  im- 
pulses. The  first  and  most  pressing  demands  for  knowledge 
on  the  ])art  of  the  race  do,  indeed,  concern  the  practical  prob- 
lems of  physical  needs  and  physical  comfort.  The  better  grati- 
fication of  those  demands  furnishes  a  call  to  the  study  of  the 
forces  and  products  of  nature  which  contribute  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  these  needs  and  to  the  increase  of  this  comfort.  But 
such  impulses  alone  do  not  account  for  the  rise  and  the  devel- 
opment of  the  particular  sciences.  The  desire  to  know,  for 
the  sake  of  the  mind's  satisfaction  in  knowledge,  furnishes  an 
impulse  as  old  and  as  universal  as  the  history  of  the  race. 
In  this  impulse  chiefly  it  is  that  the  particular  sciences  hav.3 
their  birth. 

No  form  of  science,  however, — and  the  less,  the  more  pre- 
cise and  particular  it  is, — can  fully  satisfy  man's  desire  for 
knowledge.  This  is  true  of  knowledge,  whether  regarded  as 
wisdom,  and  leading  to  right  and  successful  practice  of  affairs, 
or  regarded  as  so-called  "  knowledge  for  its  own  sake."  For 
the  human  mind,  when  once  aroused,  longs  to  know  the  world 
as  a  whole,  as  a  unity  which  shall  somehow  solve  the  puzzles 
and  contradictions  of  man's  concrete  experiences.  To  live  the 
fullest  life  and.  to  obtain  the  completest  satisfaction,  we  seem  to 
require,  as  something  over  and  above  every  particular  form 
of  adaptation  to  environment,  an  adaptation  to  the  Universe 
in  the  lar^e. 

How  shall  I  adjust  myself  to  air,  water  and  soil,  to  forest, 
brook,  and  sky,  so  as  to  live  in  comfort  and  plenty?  How 
shall  I  adapt  my  actions  so  as  to  propitiate  and  gain  the  bene- 
ficent, while  avoiding  the  evil,  influences  of  the  invisible  spirits 
which  people  and  vitalize  all  these  material  objects?  These  are 
questions  which  stimulated  the  desire  for  knowledge  of  the  so- 
called  primitive  man.  But  when,  through  the  progress  of  the 
sciences  or  of  the  religious  creeds,  which  gather  and  impart 
such  items  of  knowledge,  the  conception  of  man's  environment 
changes  and  expands,  the  desire  to  reap  the  full  benefit  of  a 


32  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

more  satisfacton^  adjustment  to  this  environment  also  changes 
and  expands.  The  knowledge  of  physical  forces  becomes  more 
complex  and  profound.  The  mastery  of  these  forces  becomes 
more  complete;  they  are  made  more  manageable  and  serviceable 
to  mankind.  Why  should  I  not  share  in  this  knowledge,  to 
the  better  satisfaction  of  my  intellectual  interests,  and  to  the 
increased  benefit  of  the  conduct  of  life?  The  laws  of  man's 
social  nature  and  social  development,  the  history  of  humanity's 
achievements,  and  the  conditions  of  its  moral  improvement  and 
welfare,  are  being  disclosed.  Why  should  I  not  learn  how  to 
rise  in  the  social  scale;  and  why  not  have  the  means  for  the 
realization  of  my  ambition  to  rise  placed  within  my  grasp  and 
at  my  disposal?  But  there  is  coming  to  humanity  an  increas- 
ing recognition  of  some  sort  of  fundamental  Unity,  which  may 
bind  together  and  furnish  the  Ultimate  Cause  of  my  environ- 
ment and  my  experiences;  and  not  of  mine  only  but  of  those 
of  the  race.  Why  should  not  I  wish  to  know  what  others  have 
thought  about  this  problem ;  and  why  should  I  not,  having  such 
knowledge  of  others'  thinking,  resolve  also  to  think  reflectively 
for  myself?  Nor  is  the  last  problem  purely  speculative.  On 
the  contrary,  according  to  the  answer  which  I  give  to  it — how- 
ever doubtfully  and  tentatively — will  largely  be  conditioned 
my  estimate  as  to  what  in  my  own  experience  and  conduct 
shall  be  esteemed  of  highest  value.  My  theory  of  reality  will 
inevitably  go  far  toward  determining  the  theory  and  practice 
of  my  daily  life.  But  to  reflect  upon  this  class  of  problems 
is  to  philosophize.  To  come  to  conclusions  upon  them,  how- 
ever negative  or  sceptical  the  conclusions  may  be,  is  to  have 
some  theory  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  World,  and  as  to  the  cor- 
rect interpretation  of  the  values  of  Life.  And  to  put  such  a 
theory  into  control  over  conduct  is  to  live  philosophically;  or 
in  other  words,  it  is  to  live  rationally,  and  as  a  man  ought 
to  live.  For  it  is  in  tbcse  most  exalted  realms  of  thought  and 
of  conduct  that  philosophy  unites  with  morality  and  religion  to 
secure  the  fullest  measure  of  the  highest  good  for  a  rational 
mind. 


CHAPTER  III 

SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

That  the  development  of  man's  reflective  thinking,  which  ws 
call  philosophy,  should  result  in  diverse  answers  to  its  in- 
quiries, becomes  a  matter  of  course  when  we  consider  the  limita- 
tions of  the  human  mind  and  the  essential  character  of  philo- 
sophical problems.  For  the  same  reasons  the  thinkers  them- 
selves, the  so-called  philosophers,  may  be  divided  into  groups 
which  emphasize  their  similarities  or  their  differences.  Hence 
arise  what  historians  are  pleased  to  call  "  schools  of  philoso- 
phy." The  existence  of  these  schools,  their  perpetual  recurrence 
in  somewhat  changed  form,  their  ceaseless  discussions  and  wran- 
glings,  and  their  failure,  after  all,  to  arrive  at  any  considerable 
agreement,  have  been  made  the  reproach  of  philosophy.  Nor 
is  there  anything  new  in  this.  The  earliest  works  in  Greek 
reflective  thinking  abound  in  criticism  of  the  popular  or  "  com- 
mon-sense" views  of  life  and  reality,  and  in  gentle  or  more 
pungent  sarcasms,  directed  toward  the  sophists  as  pretenders 
to  scientific  but  uncritical  knowledge.  On  the  other  hand, 
Greek  comedy  is  full  of  passages  ridiculing  the  substance  of 
alleged  truth,  and  the  style  of  expressing  it,  which  character- 
ized the  leaders  and  their  disciples  in  "  divine  "  philosophy. 
Then  and  there,  as  everywhere  and  at  all  times,  much  of  the 
best  and  most  influential  thought  took  other  literary  forms  than 
that  of  technical  philosophizing.  Indeed,  in  point  of  real 
merit,  both  for  ideas  and  for  the  manner  of  their  expression, 
the  greater  Greek  tragedies  have  few  peers  in  the  literature  of 
ethical  philosophy.  And  in  more  modern  times,  Goethe's 
"  Faust "  is  as  truly  a  work  of  philosophy  as  is  Spinoza's 
"  Ethica." 

There  is  much  misunderstanding  in  the  popular  mind  about 

33 


34  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  nature  and  significance  of  scliools  of  philosophy.  No  small 
part  of  this  misunderstanding  has  been  fostered  by  the  pedagog- 
ical awkwardness  and  primness  of  the  historians  of  the  sub- 
ject. For  the  writers  on  the  history  of  philosophy,  in  their 
vain  effort  to  give  the  appearance  of  a  science  to  the  narration 
of  the  truth,  are  prone,  like  other  so-called  "  scientists,"  to 
deal  with  their  material  in  a  more  imposing  way  by  establishing 
in  it  a  system  of  doubtful  or  imperfect  classifications,  Henca 
the  manner  of  grouping  (a  grouping  which  is  not  infrequently 
a  kind  of  inconsiderate  throwing  together)  different  thinkers 
and  writers,  under  characteristics  conveniently  chosen  to  suit 
his  purposes  by  the  classifier  himself.  Briefly  to  explain  philos- 
ophers as  belonging  to  such  and  such  schools  is  much  easier, 
and  sounds  quite  as  learned,  as  sympathetically  to  interpret 
the  totality  of  their  philosophical  thoughts.  A  further  pretence 
of  writing  a  scientific  history  may  then  be  made  by  showing 
how  each  thinker's  school  was  determined  for  him,  mechanic- 
ally as  it  were,  by  the  physical  and  intellectual  environment 
in  the  midst  of  which  his  thinking  was  done. 

In  order  properly  to  understand  the  character  and  the  sig- 
nificance of  schools  of  philosophy,  the  following  truths  should 
constantly  be  kept  in  mind :  In  philosophy,  as  in  war,  science, 
and  religion,  there  have  been  a  few,  but  only  a  few,  really 
great  and  epoch-making  names.  These  men  cannot  be  ex- 
plained as  the  product  of  their  own  time;  and  while  they  un- 
doubtedly manifest  their  personal  qualities  in  the  character  of 
their  thinking,  they  cannot  fitly  be  spoken  of  as  belonging  to 
any  particular  school.  To  account  for  them,  we  may  as  well 
call  them  "  inspired  geniuses  " ;  for  they  give  voice  and  shape 
to  the  unexpressed,  or  only  half-expressed,  thoughts  and  senti- 
ments of  their  times,  and  of  succeeding  times,  regarding  the 
most  satisfactory  interpretation  of  Nature  and  of  human  Life. 
This  they  do,  because  they  are  endowed  with  a  blending  of  pro- 
found intuition  with  that  ability  for  calm,  prolonged  reflection, 
which  is  pervaded  with  the  free  and  reverent  spirit  of  philos- 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  35 

ophy.  Such  is  the  Bpccial  fitness  required  for  tlie  highest  suc- 
cess in  this  kind  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  endeavor.  Thus 
these  geniuses  become  founders  of  schools,  only  in  a  modified 
meaning  of  the  latter  word.  Their  school-craft  is  not  by 
deliberate  purpose  or  because  their  thinking  is  confined  within 
the  limits  of  any  one  "  school-form  " ;  it  is  rather  because  they 
naturally  and  inevitably  attract  to  themselves  a  body  of  dis- 
ciples for  some  one  or  more  of  the  principal  aspects  of  their 
universal  and  eternally  true  thoughts.  The  following  which 
they  create  consists  of  those  who  find  themselves  thinking  essen- 
tially like  these  masters^,  in  respect  to  some  one  or  more  of  their 
dominating  convictions  and  opinions. 

On  this  fact  depends  another;  for  if  we  seek  to  know  in  its 
completeness  what  these  greater  thinkers  have  revealed  about 
the  various  problems  with  which  philosophy  is  chiefly  con- 
cerned, we  shall  find  that  they  have,  in  general,  appreciated, 
and  striven  to  blend  in  harmony,  all  the  truths  accredited  by 
all  the  principal  schools.  The  scholastic  treatment  of  the 
average  historian,  therefore,  does  them  injustice.  In  ancient 
times,  for  example,  we  are  invited  to  notice  the  differences  be- 
tween the  methods  and  conclusions  of  Plato  and  those  of 
Aristotle;  in  more  modern  times,  of  Spinoza  and  Kant.  These 
are  then  so  sharply  contrasted  as  apparently  to  make  it  neces- 
sary for  the  student  to  assign  them  to  different  schools  of 
philosophy.  But,  in  fact,  both  Plato  and  Aristotle  were  about 
equally  idealists,  as  well  as  realists,  and  realists  as  truly  as 
idealists;  while  both  Spinoza  and  Kant  strove,  each  in  his  own 
way,  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  a  critical  scepticism  and  an 
ethical  absolutism.  Among  the  multitude  of  lesser  thinkers 
also,  there  is  always  a  rational  and  a  sentimental  revolt  against 
having  their  opinions  on  philosophical  subjects  classed  as  be- 
longing to  this  or  that  school.  And,  indeed,  what  seems  to 
afford  so  much  satisfaction  to  the  average  critic  or  writer  on 
the  history  of  philosophy,  is  a  source  of  dissatisfaction  to  every 
honest   thinker    on   philosophical   problems.      For   every   such 


36  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

thinker,  classification  of  the  currently  adopted  and  tolerably 
rigid  sort,  is  apt  not  to  accord  with  the  facts. 

In  truth,  the  diversity  of  philosophical  endeavors  and  con- 
clusions, and  the  subtilty  of  grades  and  transitions,  are  such 
that  any  approach  to  the  kind  of  classification  which  ths 
ordinary  theory  of  schools  of  philosophy  demands,  is  quite  im- 
possible. Instead  of  this  variety  being  made  a  source  of  re- 
proach to  philosophy,  it  should  the  rather  be  regarded  as  a 
testimony  to  its  abounding  life.  And  when  the  wealth  of  the 
material,  and  the  complexity  of  the  problems,  in  the  form 
in  which  these  sources  are  explored  and  made  available  for 
philosophy  by  the  modern  sciences,  are  largely  increased,  then, 
of  necessity,  diversities  multiply  in  the  details  of  the  method 
and  conclusions  of  philosophy.  There  are  at  present — to  illus- 
trate the  matter  by  one  of  the  particular  sciences — perhaps 
some  two  hundred  different  theories  of  evolution  advocated  by 
different  workmen  in  the  field  of  biology.  All  these  theories 
have  alleged  facts  in  their  support;  but  all  these  theories 
united  do  not  begin  to  account  for,  or  successfully  interpret, 
all  the  facts.  For  life  is  ever  larger  and  more  complex  than 
theories  of  life.  That-which-is  far  outstretches  man's  feeble 
efforts  to  tell  what-it-is  and  how-it-came-to-be.  If  this  is  true 
of  one  limited  domain  of  science,  how  could  it  fail  to  be  true 
of  human  thought  when  dealing  with  the  problem  of  the  Being 
of  the  World  in  the  large?  This  third  contention,  which  dis- 
closes the  essential  life  of  reason,  cannot  profitably  be  forgotten 
in  dealing  with  the  subject  suggested  by  the  title — "  Schools  of 
Philosophy." 

Yet  again :  amidst  all  the  diversity  of  philosophical  opinions, 
with  its  increase  rather  than  diminution  in  modern  times, 
there  has  been  a  certain  growing  tendency  to  substantial  agree- 
ments. As  to  the  general  conception  of  evolution — its  verity, 
immense  range  of  application,  and  explanatory  value — few,  if 
any,  students  of  the  phenomena  of  plant  and  animal  life 
entertain  any  measure  of  doubt.    If  they  were  all  as  ready  to 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  37 

discover  and  promote  agreement,  irrespective  of  noted  names 
and  notable  theories,  as  they  are  to  emphasize  and  exploit  the 
divergences  covered  by  the  names  and  theories;  some  compre- 
hensive doctrine  of  evolution  would  make  a  better  showing  than 
can  now  be  claimed  for  any  of  the  two  hundred  views,  differ- 
ing as  they  do  in  respect  to  details.  The  same  thing,  in  an  even 
more  striking  and  larger  way,  we  shall  find  to  be  true  of  philos- 
ophy. No  realism  can  be  so  extreme  as  to  take  no  account  of 
the  reality  of  the  ideal.  No  idealism  can  remove  itself  so  high 
above  the  ground  of  reality  as  not  to  touch  it  at  many  points. 
No  dogmatism  can  wholly  avoid  self-criticism;  and  criticism 
cannot  take  its  start  from  other  than  a  dogmatic  point  of 
standing;  while  the  scepticism  in  which  it  too  often  terminates 
is  compelled,  in  self-justification,  to  resort  to  a  species  of 
dogmatism  again.  Schopenhauer  cannot  make  the  Will  to  be 
All,  without  introducing  Intellect  as  a  sort  of  second  fiddle 
necessary  to  the  universal  harmony.  The  Hegelian  Season,  in 
order  to  accomplish  or  explain  anything,  must  figure  as  an 
active  reason;  otherwise,  as  an  all-embracing  and  all-creative 
Will.  The  very  foundations  of  so-called  Pragmatism,  with  its 
foolish  fury  toward  the  systems  called  by  their  older  and  more 
respectable  names,  are  themselves  laid  in  Eationalism  and 
Idealism.  Its  truths  have  all  of  them  long  ago  been  duly 
incorporated,  as  fragments,  into  both  these  so-called  schools. 
And  how  shall  one  rationalize  experience  with  the  real  world 
of  things  and  minds,  unless  one  finds  the  influence  of  ideals  in 
thii  real  world;  or  how  shall  one  idealize  this  same  world  with- 
out taking  counsel  of  the  typical  conceptions  of  human  reason  ? 
With  this  modified  meaning  of  the  term  we  may  now  briefly 
consider  the  principal  causes  and  chief  characteristics  of  the 
different  schools  of  philosophy.  The  principal  causes  may  be 
classified  under  two  heads.  These  are,  first,  the  limited  char- 
acter of  all  human  thought;  and,  second,  the  complex  and  in- 
definite character  of  the  problems  proposed  in  the  name  of 
philosophy. 


160171 


38  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Every  individual  thinker  has,  of  course,  a  certain  tempera- 
ment, a  certain  limited  culture,  and  certain  personal  prefer- 
ences and  somewhat  peculiar  points  of  view.  If  the  tempera- 
ment is  marked^  and  its  tendencies  habitually  uncontrolled; 
if  the  culture  is  narrow  and  confined  within  the  outlines  of 
some  one  intellectual  interest  to  the  exclusion  of  others;  and 
if  the  preferences  and  peculiar  points  of  view  induce  unyield- 
ing prejudices ;  then  the  very  individuality  of  the  thinker  deter- 
mines within  shrunken  limitations  the  so-called  school  to  which 
he  must  belong.  Doubtless,  even  in  the  case  of  the  most  nobly 
free  and  universal  minds,  temptations  and  tendencies  to  the 
uncritical  embrace  of  certain  conclusions  are  not  always  suc- 
cessfully resisted.  There  is,  therefore,  something  of  the  tem- 
peramental, the  suspiciously  individualistic  and  unduly  preju- 
diced, in  every  one's  philosophizing.  Too  much,  however,  may 
easily  be  made  of  all  this.  And  there  is  no  more  reason  why 
one's  philosophy  should  be  tainted  with  prejudices  arising  from 
these  sources,  than  why  one's  science,  or  one's  rules  of  conduct, 
should  be  ill  affected  in  the  same  way.  Indeed,  to  suspect 
your  neighbor  of  yielding  to  temperament,  and  of  showing 
bigotry,  because  he  does  not  agree  with  you  in  an  issue  deter- 
mined by  reflective  thinking,  may  be  as  ungenerous  as  to  accuse 
him  of  immorality  because  he  differs  from  you  in  a  matter  of 
the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  The  mind  truly  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  philosophy  is  even  more  on  the  alert  to  guard 
against  the  errors  which  arise  from  prejudice,  haste,  confusion 
as  to  causes  and  issues,  than  is  the  mind  trained  in  the  method 
of  the  physical  sciences.  A  part  of  every  one's  preparation  for 
serious  work  of  reflective  thinking  is  the  study  of  his  "  per- 
sonal equation." 

There  are  limitations  of  thought,  however,  which  every 
thinker  shares  with  all  members  of  the  race.  These  are  limita- 
tions of  human  and  finite  thought.  It  does  not  need  the  elab- 
orate mechanism  of  the  Kantian  Critique  to  make  us  aware  of 
this  truth.    Poets,  and  writers  on  physics  as  well  as  on  theology. 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  39 

have  been  from  of  old  convicted  of  this  confession.  The  spirit 
of  wonder  and  the  spirit  of  worship  are  both  born  of  this  weak- 
ness. As  we  have  already  seen,  it  is  the  avowed  purpose  of 
one  of  the  most  difficult  and  important  branches  of  philosophy 
to  ascertain  the  conditions,  extent  and  guiding  principles  in 
practice,  of  all  human  cognition, — of  thought  and  knowledge, 
as  such.  This  the  Kantian  Critique  attempted  to  do,  but 
failed,  of  course,  in  accomplishing  perfectly.  Of  late  it  has 
been  fashionable  in  certain  quarters  to  denounce  the  so-called 
critical  philosophy,  and  to  sneer  at  those  who  still 
incline  to  cultivate  epistemology,  or  to  take  an  interest  in  a 
theory  of  knowledge.  But  without  this  critical  knowledge  of 
the  essential  nature  and  limitations  of  human  thought,  no 
would-be  philosopher  can  either  comprehend  just  where  he  is 
himself  standing  or  fitly  bring  before  others  his  special,  pet 
theory  of  the  nature  and  meaning  of  the  Universe.  Moreove", 
one's  conclusions  on  this  problem  of  philosophy  determine  oner's 
entire  view  of  what  philosophy  is,  and  of  what  philosophy  can 
do.  A  relatively  well-thought-out  system  of  opinions,  that  hang 
together,  and  serve  as  well  as  any  individual  mind  can,  to 
interpret  man's  experience  with  nature  and  with  himself, — this 
is  all  that  any  school  of  philosophy  can  claim  to  furnish. 

Besides  these  temperamental  and  cultural  tendencies  to 
prejudice  v/hich  one  may  largely  escape,  and  besides  the  limita- 
tions of  human  thought  from  which,  under  existing  conditions, 
no  escape  seems  possible,  there  are  those  restrictions  upon  the 
completeness  and  thoroughness  of  any  man's  thinking  which 
belong  to  his  physical,  intellectual,  and  social  environment. 
Among  the  latter,  we  may  enumerate  native  capacity,  oppor- 
tunity for  gathering  material  and  reflecting  upon  it,  induce- 
ments other  than  those  furnished  by  the  inward  impulse  to 
philosophize,  and  any  special  bent  of  interest  toward  some  one 
class  of  the  several  problems  which  are  proposed  for  systematic 
philosophy. 

Finally,  in  the  most  recent  times,  the  same  tendency  to  spe- 


40  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

cialization  has  manifested  itself  in  philosophy  as  in  the  par- 
ticular sciences.  Each  one  of  these  sciences  is  developing  its  own 
characteristic  philosophy.  Physics  is  trying  to  account  for  the 
Being  of  the  World  in  terms  of  the  quantitative  measurement 
and  geometrical  arrangement  of  electrons,  strains,  etc.,  in  the 
one  all-pervasive  Ether.  The  biological  sciences  are  striving 
to  solve  their  more  difficult  problems  by  a  theory  of  Evolution 
which  is  either  pretty  strictly  expressed  in  terms  of  chemico- 
electrical  mechanism,  or  else  yields  to  the  necessity  for  giving 
more  room  to  psychological  explanations  under  terms  that 
assume  a  certain  kind  of  soul-life  for  plants  as  well  as  animals. 
And,  indeed,  by  both  the  physical  and  the  biological  sciences, 
atoms,  electrons,  and  living  cells,  are  virtually  now  endowed 
with  sensitive  souls;  while  the  historical  and  social  sciences 
seem  to  be  returning  from  the  extremes  of  a  purely  mechanical 
philosophy  to  a  philosophy  which  takes  more  account  of  con- 
siderations derived  from  the  sciences  of  psychology  and  ethics. 
The  student  of  philosophy  in  these  days  must,  therefore, 
quickly  become  aware  of  the  limitations  which  are  put  upon 
the  success  of  his  peculiar  task  by  the  diversity  of  philosophical 
opinions  urged  upon  him,  with  an  imposing  array  of  confirm- 
atory facts  and  impressive  arguments,  by  the  exj)erts  in  the 
particular  sciences.  And  if  these  experts  are  not  agreed — as, 
indeed,  they  are  not — over  the  philosophical  foundations  and 
the  more  important  principles  of  their  own  sciences,  how  shall 
he  reach  a  satisfactory  conclusion  as  a  professional  expert  in 
the  so-called  "  science  of  sciences "  ?  That  such  an  one  feels 
with  peculiar  keenness  the  limitations  of  his  own  mind  which 
are  due  to  the  fact  that  he  continues  human,  while  tlie  prob- 
lems, both  scientific  and  philosophical,  which  come  before  the 
race  are  hourly  growing  more  complex  and  seemingly  insolv- 
able,  is  a  sign  of  philosophic  calmness,  modesty,  and  good- 
sense.  But  the  almost  inevitable  result  of  the  attempt  to  match 
his  human  weakness  of  intellect,  and  human  limitations  of 
capacity    and    opportunity,    against    the    ever-expanding    and 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  41 

indeed  infinite  task  of  modern  systematic  philosophy,  is  tlie 
espousal  of  certain  one-sided  and  partial  views.  The  thinker  is 
thus  tempted  to  join  some  "school."  In  this  way  his  seeming 
influence  will,  at  least  for  a  time,  he  considerably  increased. 
The  advocates  of  his  school  among  the  particular  sciences,  or 
the  antagonists  of  opponent  views  among  theologians  and  re- 
ligionists, will  the  more  readily  welcome  and  commend  him. 
By  the  character  of  one's  own  temperament  and  education,  and 
by  the  pressure  of  thoughts  kindred  to  those  now  enticing  one 
under  promise  of  a  hastily  completed  symmetry  to  one's 
attempts  at  philosophizing,  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  being  influ- 
enced profoundly.  It  is  easier  to  "  take  up  with  "  the  thoughts 
that  find  one,  rather  than  patiently  to  persist  in  the  effort  to 
find  for  one's  self  such  thoughts  as  are  true.  As  Fichte  said: 
"  The  kind  of  philosophy  which  one  chooses  depends  on  the 
kind  of  man  one  is.  For  a  philosophical  system  is  not  a  dead 
bit  of  furniture  which  one  can  take  to  one's  self  or  dispose  of 
as  one  pleases ;  but  it  is  endowed  with  a  soul  by  the  soul  of  the 
man  who  has  it." 

As  an  intellectual  exercise,  therefore,  the  tendency  to  thai 
incompleteness  and  one-sidedness  which  results  in  schools  of 
philosophy  would  seem  necessarily  to  be  upon  the  increase. 
There  is  no  proof  that  the  essential  capacity  of  the  human  in- 
tellect has  expanded,  since  man  began  to  be  known  in  recorded 
history.  Judged  by  the  tests  of  a  genuine  intellectual  great- 
ness there  are  as  few  Aristotles  and  Platos  to-day  as  there 
were  more  than  two-thousand  years  ago  among  the  Greeks. 
And  two-thousand  years  earlier  than  they,  Egyptians  and  Ori- 
entals appear  to  have  shown  as  keen  intuitive  insights,  and  as 
logical  reflective  qualities  of  mind,  toward  the  problems  of 
morality  and  religion  as  are  in  exercise  at  the  present  time. 
But  in  both  science  and  philosophy,  while  the  limitations  of  the 
human  intellect,  the  promptings  of  the  human  heart,  and  the 
practical  necessities  of  the  human  will,  have  remained  essen- 
tially unchanged,  the  demands  upon  the  student  of  science  or 


42  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

philosophy  have  enormously  increased.  Both  the  main  reasons, 
therefore,  for  that  incompleteness  of  which  the  existence  of 
schools  of  philosophy  is  a  witness,  have  correspondingly  in- 
creased. The  result  has  been  that  all  tendencies  and  schools, 
and  all  grades  and  shades  of  opinions  within  or  between  the 
various  so-called  schools,  are  flourishing  to-day  as  never  before 
in  the  history  of  philosophy.  No  wonder  that '  the  confused 
looker-on,  who  is  curious  to  know  what  all  the  debate  is  about, 
thinks  of  the  philosophy  of  the  schools  as  having  gone  to  pieces 
entirely.  And  yet  there  is  more  philosophy  concealed  under- 
neath, immanent  within,  and  penetrating  through  the  particu- 
lar sciences,  and  probably  also  more  philosophizing  on  the  part 
of  the  common  people,  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the 
race. 

In  spite  of  all  this  confusion,  however,  we  may  reduce  the 
phenomena  to  some  good  degree  of  order  by  noticing  how 
largely  the  differences  are  matters  of  emphasis;  and  by  empha- 
sizing the  agreements  rather  than  the  differences. 

And,  first,  it  should  be  understood  that  several  of  the  terms 
applied  to  distinguish  the  different  schools  of  philosophy 
are  not  properly  applied.  Such  are  the  terms.  Dogmatism, 
Scepticism,  Criticism ;  and  especially  the  terms  Agnosticism  and 
Eclecticism.  The  first  three  of  these  terms  apply  to  the  differ- 
ent methods  of  arriving  at  conclusions  by  the  process  of  reflect- 
ive thinking  rather  than  to  those  differences  in  the  conclusions 
themselves  which  characterize  the  so-called  schools  of  philos- 
ophy. A  doctrine  of  method  does,  indeed,  go  far  toward 
determining  the  results  of  philosophizing.  And  in  this  doc- 
trine there  may  be  concealed  a  latent  and  unconscious  tendency, 
or  an  expressed  adherence,  in  favor  of  realism,  idealism,  or 
dualism.  The  very  character  of  the  mind  of  the  thinker  upon 
philosophical  problems,  whether  it  be  dogmatic,  sceptical,  or 
critical,  goes  a  certain  way — and  sometimes  a  long  way — 
toward  determining  the  class  of  opinions  with  which  he  will 
feel  compelled  to  ally  himself.     But  in  the  technical  meaning 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  43 

which  philosophizing  gives  to  these  three  terms,  they  apply 
to  methods  and  not  to  results.  As  methods,  the  dogmatic,  the 
sceptical,  and  the  critical,  must  be  used  more  or  less  by  all 
thinkers,  irrespective  of  the  school  or  the  age  to  which  they 
behmg.  They  stand  for  essential  "  moments,"  factors,  or  forms 
of  functioning,  by  every  human  mind,  no  matter  what  the 
subject  of  its  thought.  And  all  philosophical  reflection  must 
make  use  of  them  all.  For  example,  we  call  Immanuel  Kant 
the  founder  of  the  modern  critical  school;  and  we  have  good 
reason  to  do  this,  if  we  understand  correctly  what  is  meant  by 
our  words.  Kant's  greater  philosophical  writings  are  all  called 
by  the  term  "  Critique."  They  all  applied  the  critical  method, 
as  their  author  understood  it,  to  the  intellect  and  logical  facul- 
ties, to  moral  judgment  and  ideals,  and  to  what  Kant  called 
"judgment"  in  the  gesthetical  realm  (using  the  word  "a:sthet- 
ical "  in  a  wide  and  loose  significance).  But  Kant  was  also  a 
sceptic,  with  a  curious  touch  of  uncriticized  realism,  in  mat- 
ters of  so-called  science;  a  lofty  idealist  and  man  of  faith,  in 
matters  of  morals  and  religion;  and  he  held  to  an  unanalyzed 
mixture  of  realism  and  idealism  with  regard  to  the  application 
of  the  teleological  argument  to  the  beauty  of  nature  and  to  the 
existence  of  God.  Not  infrequently  the  most  pronounced  scep- 
tics with  reference  to  the  claims  of  the  ideals  of  morals  and 
religion  are  the  most  uncritical  dogmatists  in  matters  of  scien- 
tific speculation;  while  no  one  else  knows  so  much  about  the 
remotest  and  obscurest  regions  of  things  terrestrial  as  many  of 
the  most  pronounced  agnostics  with  reference  to  the  plainest 
facts  of  the  inward  life.  But  the  fuller  expounding  of  these 
"  moments  "  of  human  thought  belongs  to  that  chapter  in  a 
theory  of  cognition  which  will  deal  with  dogmatism,  scepticism 
and  criticism,  as  all  alike  necessary  to  the  acquisition,  growth, 
and  testing  of  every  form  of  human  knowledge. 

That  agnosticism  cannot  be  classed  with  idealism,  realism, 
and  dualism,  as  a  co-ordinate  school  or  system  of  pliilosophy, 
is  s?till  more  evident.     Agnosticism,   in   so   far  as  it  remains 


44  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

agnostic  on  good  and  reasonable  grounds — that  is,  from  lack  of 
the  right  kind  and  amount  of  evidence — cannot  be  distin- 
guished from  the  critical  or  sceptical  attitude  of  mind.  Quite 
too  often,  however,  as  has  already  been  suggested,  it  degener- 
ates into  a  kind  of  sullen  or  despairing  dogmatism.  Or  if  it 
takes  up  a  positive  position  with  regard  to  any  of  the  greater 
problems  of  philosophy,  it  ceases  so  far  forth  to  be  agnostic 
and  falls  under  the  head  of  some  one  or  other  of  the  true 
schools.  Eclecticism,  as  the  very  term  signifies,  unless  guided 
by  some  principle  of  selection,  in  philosophy  as  in  medicine  and 
morals,  results  in  a  conglomerate  of  assumptions  and  opinions, 
that  can  by  no  means  be  reduced  to  the  state  of  a  consistent 
system. 

Therefore,  all  the  terms  to  which  reference  has  already  been 
made,  although  they  have  often  served  the  purposes  of  classifi- 
cation, really  designate  differences  of  method  in  attacking  the 
problems  of  philosophy,  or  in  the  mental  attitudes  assumed 
toward  one  or  more  of  these  problems,  rather  than  differences 
in  "  schools  "  properly  so-called.  Indeed,  the  opinions  of  all 
the  schools,  if  intelligently  arrived  at  and  held,  involve  both 
scepticism  ending  in  agnosticism,  and  also  criticism  leading 
to  an  affirmative  or  dogmatic  conclusion.  The  same  thing  is 
not  true,  however,  of  those  more  or  less  carefully  compacted 
systems  \»hich  fall  under  the  titles  of  Realism,  Idealism,  and 
Dualism.  In  a  different  and  more  appropriate  meaning  of  the 
word,  these  may  be  called  the  three  principal  schools  of  sys- 
tematic reflective  thinking.  Under  changing  forms  and  with 
differing  degrees  of  mixture,  they  have  existed  during  the  en- 
tire history  of  philosophy.  From  the  very  nature  of  the  case, 
they  must  continue  to  exist.  And  yet  it  can  scarcely  be  insisted 
upon  too  much,  that  no  one  of  them  has  ever  been  held,  or  can 
possibly  ever  be  held,  in  perfect  purity  and  separation  from  ele- 
ments more  properly  belonging  to  the  other  schools.  This  the 
following  brief  exhibit  of  their  characteristics  and  relations 
will  make  more  clear.     For  its   completer  proof   a  thorough 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  45 

study  of  the  history  of  philosophical  speculation  is  essential. 
The  subsequent  more  detailed  discussion  of  the  problems  of 
philosophy  will  also  show  how  this  classification  into  schools 
arises  out  of  the  very  nature  of  philosophy  itself. 

Realism,  in  its  most  boorish  and  crude  form,  is  the  primitive 
philosophy.  Without  prolonged  reflection  or  scientific  criticism 
it  takes  the  existence  of  "  Things,"  as  they  appear  to  so-called 
"  common-sense,"  to  be  ready-made.  Its  theory  of  knowledge 
is  that  these  things,  by  some  process  of  copying-off  or  making 
and  receiving  of  impressions,  are  given  to  the  mind  in  sub- 
stantially the  same  form  as  that  in  which  they  are  ready-made. 
As  to  the  reality  of  things,  common-sense  has  no  doubt.  The 
uncriticized  testimony  of  universal  experience  allows  of  no 
scepticism  about  so  obvious  a  conclusion.  But  since  the  aim  of 
reflective  thinking,  in  even  its  earliest  and  crudest  efforts,  is 
to  explain  and  to  unify  experience,  some  one  kind  of  a  "  Thing- 
like" reality  becomes  the  hypothesis  of  a  beginning  philosophy. 
And  if  the  water  of  Thales,  or  the  undifferentiated  mass  of 
matter  proposed  by  Anaximander,  proved  quite  insufficient  to 
account  for  the  complex  and  varied  world  of  sensation,  the 
atom  of  Lucretius,  with  its  inherent  tendencies  and  "  hooks  " 
for  attachment  to  others  of  its  fellows,  seemed  to  promise  a 
more  satisfying  principle  for  explaining  the  hidden  nature 
of  all  that  really  is.  When  the  physical  and  natural  sciences, 
with  their  increasingly  accurate  and  searching  means  of  analy- 
sis, develop  further,  material  things  are  found  to  need  a  far 
more  elaborate  explanation.  For  the  essence  of  things  is  by  no 
means  so  simple  as  it  appears.  On  the  contrary,  when  called 
by  another  name,  the  "  constitution  of  matter  "  is  found  to  be 
infinitely  subtle  and  complex.  Where  modern  chemistry,  with 
all  its  marvellous  advances,  fails  to  explain  by  complicating  the 
construction  of  atoms,  and  by  endowing  them  with  an  ever 
larger  equipment  of  qualities,  modern  physics  comes  to  its  aid. 
And  now  the  most  powerful  imagination,  in  its  loftiest  flights, 
can  scarcely  suffice  to  picture  the  constitution  and  inner  work- 


46  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ings  of  that  mysterious  Ether  which  the  philosophical  realism 
of  to-day  would  establish  in  the  seat  of  parent  and  producer  of 
all  material  things. 

But  realism,  even  in  its  most  primitive  form,  cannot  wholly 
evade  the  call  of  the  sensuously  invisible  and  of  the  ideal. 
Indeed,  a  certain  form  of  idealism  is  older  and  more  universal 
than  any  crudest  form  of  philosophical  realism  can  claim  to  be. 
This  is  the  form  of  idealism  which  is  called  religion.  Things 
visible  and  tangible  seem  satisfactorily  to  explain  very  little  to 
the  religious  wants  of  the  primitive  man.  He,  therefore,  looks 
for  the  satisfaction  of  these  wants  to  invisible  spiritual  agencies 
which  his  imagination  constructs  after  the  pattern  of  his  own 
self-conscious  spirit — -like  himself — and  yet,  at  least,  in  some 
respects,  superior  to  this  spirit.  Since  these  can  determine  his 
weal  or  woe,  while  the  methods  of  their  operation  are  concealed 
and  even  their  presence  and  places  of  abode  are  hard  to  detect, 
he  fears  and  propitiates  them,  or  welcomes  them  with  pleasure 
to  the  hearth  and  to  the  family  or  tribal  feast.  Thus  the  oldest 
and  most  widespread  form  of  philosophy  is  the  philosophy  of 
religion.  As  the  civilization  and  culture  of  mankind  advances, 
and  as  the  object  of  reflective  thinking  in  the  unifying  and 
harmonizing  of  the  different  fields  of  human  experience  be- 
comes more  obvious,  a  spiritual  Ideal  contests  with  the  physical, 
for  the  claim  to  be  the  supreme  reality.  Since  the  roots  of 
religion  are  quite  as  deep  down  and  strongly  interlaced  in 
human  nature  as  are  the  roots  of  the  physico-chemical  sciences, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  suspect  that  philosophy  will 
ever  relinquish  its  claim  to  afford  an  explanation  of  experience 
through  the  reasoned  faith  in  a  spiritual  ideal.  And  as  our 
further  discussions  will  show,  the  most  adequate  form  of 
modern  scientific  realism  experiences  more  keenly  than  ever 
before  the  necessity  of  admitting  into  its  conception  of  the 
Being  of  the  World  the  truths  of  a  philosophical  idealism. 

But  to  know  visible  things  and  explain  the  world  of  experi- 
ence as  the  product  of  their  interaction,  and  at  the  same  time 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  47 

to  believe  in  invisible  spirits  and  to  attribute  largely  to  their 
action  so  many  of  our  experiences  in  this  same  world,  is  to 
proclaim  a  sort  of  Dualism  as  the  last  word  of  philosophy. 
Things  and  spirits,  or  spirits  in  things,  are  two ;  and  the  end  of 
reflective   thinking  is,   if  possible,  to   discover  some  essential 
union,  if  not  an  identity,  of  the  two.     Indeed,  the  very  begin- 
nings of  all  experience  are  made  in  the  experience  of  an  unde- 
niable dualism.     This  is,  at  first,  the  dualism  between  things 
and  myself;  and,  afterward,  it  is  the  dualism  between  a  part 
at  least  of  this  thing-like  body  of  mine  and  the  real  me.     The 
crude  thinking  of  primitive  or  uncultured  man  has  no  trouble 
with  the  hypothesis  of  a  soul  that  is  separable  from  the  body. 
On  the  contrary,  in  order  to  explain  all  his  experiences  with, 
himself,  and  with  his  environment  of  things  and  spirits,  he 
seems  to  need  two,  or  three,  or  even  more,  souls.     Separated 
from  this  body,  however,  he  cannot  conceive  of  them,  or  of  their 
doings  while  separate,  except  in  terms  of  other  bodily  qualities 
and  shapes.    And  yet  these  are  not  precisely  the  same  thing 
which  he   means  to  indicate  by  speaking  of  spirits  or  souls. 
Essentially   the   same  dualism,  however   differently  expressed, 
cannot  be  transcended  by  modern  philosophy.     It  lies  at  the 
basis  of  all  the  particular  sciences,  both  physical  and  psycho- 
logical.    Especially  is  it  controlling  in  that  attempt  to  estab- 
lish concrete  terms  of  relation  between  the  two  "  moments  "  of 
body  and  spirit,  which  calls  itself  psycho-physics  or  physiolog- 
ical psychology.     Such  a  science  must  assume  some  theory  as  to 
this  relation.    This  is  true  whether  the  result  takes  the  form  of 
a  theory  of  parallelism,  or  of  interaction,  or  of  a  virtual  mate- 
rialism, or  of  egoistic  idealism.    The  two  non-convertible  classes 
of  phenomena  are  there;  their  existence  in  experience  cannot  be 
denied.    The  moment  the  attempt  is  made  to  do  away  with  the 
differences  between  them,  'the  problem   vanishes;  and  with  it 
vanishes  all  hope  of  a  science  that  shall  establish  relations  be- 
tween the  two.     In  the  larger  field  of  the  final  philosophy  of 
the  Being  of  the  World,  however,  the  difficulties  of  overcoming 


48  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

this  persistent  tendency  to  dualism  take  on  another  form. 
There  the  contest  becomes  for  the  most  part  a  contest  between 
a  monistic  Idealism  and  a  materialistic  Eealism. 

The  inevitable  and  legitimate  tendency  of  philosophical 
development  is  toward  some  form  of  Monism.  Centuries  be- 
fore our  immediate  ancestors  had  achieved  any  result  worthy 
of  the  name  of  a  system  of  philosophy,  the  gifted  race  which 
invaded  Northern  India  had  evolved  all  the  principal  thoughts 
which  characterize  and  help  to  classify  all  the  different  systems. 
These  thoughts  they  expressed,  indeed,  in  figurative  and  myth- 
ical form ;  and  the  chief  interest  of  all  the  schools  centered 
in  the  field  of  the  philosophy  of  religion.  But,  making  the 
proper  allowances  for  this  form,  we  can  scarcely  exaggerate 
the  meed  of  admiration  to  which  these  speculative  thinkers, 
considering  the  lack  of  all  scientific  development  in  their  time, 
are  justly  entitled.  All  the  schools,  as  we  have  said,  were  repre- 
sented in  these  early  days  of  philosophy  in  India.  But  the 
prevalent  and  more  truly  characteristic  school  was  a  thorough- 
going idealism.  This  world  of  things  which,  to  the  early  Greek 
and  to  the  modern  scientific  mind  seems  so  real,  and  which 
with  its  forces  and  material  elements  is  so  capable  of  explain- 
ing and  interpreting  all  experience,  to  the  Indian  mind  seemed 
a  sphere  of  illusion,  seemed  Maya  and  no  genuine  reality.  Only 
the  One  Ideal  was  truly  real :  all  particular  realities  existed  only 
as  its  ever-changing  and  rapidly  fleeting  ideas.  To  the  inquirer 
after  the  true  account  of  existence  this  Ideal  One  replies : 
"  Earth,  water,  fire,  air,  space,  mind,  understanding,  and  self- 
consciousness — so  is  my  nature  divided  into  eight  parts.  But 
learn  now  my  higher  nature,  for  this  is  only  my  lower  one. 
.  .  .  I  am  the  creator  and  the  destroyer  of  all  the  world. 
Higher  than  I  is  nothing.  On  me  the  universe  is  woven  like 
pearls  upon  a  thread.  .  .  .  Know  all  things  to  be  from  Me 
alone,  whether  they  have  the  quality  of  goodness,  of  passion, 
or  of  darkness.  I  am  not  in  them ;  but  they  are  in  Me.  .  .  . 
Hard  to  overcome  is  the  divine  illusion  which  envelopes  me, 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  49 

while  it  arises  from  these  qualities.  Only  they  pass  through 
this  illusion  who  come  to  Me  alone.  ...  I  am  the  inexhaust- 
ible seed.  I  am  immortality  and  death.  I  am  being  and  not 
being.  ...  I  am  glory,  fortune,  speech,  memory,  wisdom, 
constancy,  and  mercy  ...  I  am  the  punishment  of  the 
punisher  and  the  polity  of  them  that  would  win  victory !  I 
am  silence.  I  am  knowledge.  There  is  no  end  of  my  divine 
manifestations." 

This  impassioned  and  mystical  cry  of  an  idealistic  monism 
sounds  to  the  modern  Western  ear  like  a  demoniac  call  on 
reason  to  fling  itself  from  the  rock  of  reality  into  a  bottomless 
abyss  shrouded  in  impenetrable  mist.  And  from  it  or  from 
any  invitation  resembling  it,  modern  scientific  realism  turns 
away  to  accept  the  embraces  of  an  all-creating  and  all-explain- 
ing Ether,  or  some  other  quasi-material  principle.  In  its  ex- 
treme form,  however,  almost  every  word  among  those  just 
quoted  as  descriptive  of  the  ancient  Indian  Idealism  might  be 
put  into  the  mouth  of  the  apostle  of  the  modern  Western  Eeal- 
ism.  We  say,  "in  its  extreme  form";  that  is,  when  this 
realism  assumes  to  have  discovered  in  Matter,  or  in  Ether,  or 
in  a  Being  of  the  World  which  somehow  mysteriously  combines 
the  qualities  of  both,  an  adequate  explanation  and  a  "  soul- 
satisfying"  interpretation  of  the  totality  of  human  experience. 

"  Wherever,"  says  von  Hartmann  in  his  "  Philosophy  of  the 
Unconscious"  (ii,  p.  234),  "we  may  look  among  the  original 
philosophical  or  religious  systems  of  the  first  rank,  everywhere 
do  we  meet  with  the  tendency  to  Monism;  and  it  is  only  stars 
of  the  second  or  third  magnitude  which  find  satisfaction  in  an 
external  dualism  or  still  greater  division."  The  same  writer 
insists  that,  in  all  schools  of  philosophy  of  the  modern  epoch, 
we  see  "  this  tendency  to  Monism  more  or  less  perfectly  realized 
in  one  fashion  or  another."  These  statements  are  substantially 
true  as  matters  of  historical  fact.  The  reasons  for  the  truth, 
especially  in  its  application  to  the  modern  epoch,  are  chiefly 
these  three:  (1)  The  positive  sciences  are  more  and  more  both 


50  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

assuming  and  demonstrating  the  substantial  unity  of  the  Being 
of  the  World,  as  known  to  them  all  in  terms  of  the  various 
kinds  of  phenomena;  (2)  philosophy  is  more  and  more  feeling 
the  pressure  of  evidence  from  the  divergent  schools  of  specula- 
tion, in  the  form  of  a  compulsion  to  unite  in  some  Theory  of 
Eeality  that  shall  accredit  and  comprehend  the  fuller  truth, 
which  is  only  partially  credited  and  imperfectly  comprehended 
by  each  one  of  these  divergent  schools;  (3)  religion  is  seeking, 
and  in  the  form  of  the  increasingly  dominant  systems  of 
theology,  religion  is  finding,  such  a  conception  of  its  Object  as 
shall  harmonize  the  various  moral  and  emotional  impulses  in 
which  the  religious  experience  has  its  sources  and  its  guiding 
forces.  In  a  word,  science,  philosophy  and  religion  are  striv- 
ing to  unify  all  experience  in  One  Ideal-Eeal. 

Dualism,  as  a  claimant  for  the  position  of  a  rational  and 
consistent  system  of  reflective  thinking,  is,  therefore,  undoubt- 
edly being  discredited  by  the  progress  of  the  age. 

But  the  considerations  upon  which  all  dualistic  systems  in 
the  past  have  chiefly  insisted,  can  no  more  safely  be  neglected 
by  the  modern  epoch  than  by  any  other  epoch  or  age  in  the 
history  of  human  thought.  Certain  distinctions,  which  very 
readily  take  the  form  of  oppositions  and  contradictions,  still 
persist  with  undiminished  energy.  These  distinctions  lie  at  the 
base  of  human  experience;  they  seem  incorporate  with  the  very 
structure  of  the  universe  itself.  The  imiverse  is  07ie,  is  in- 
deed a  true  «ni-verse;  but  there  are  two  times  two  princi- 
ples, and  as  many  kinds  of  forces,  which  perpetually  re-appear 
as  contrasted  in  their  intrinsic  qualities  and  as  contesting  each 
other's  fields  of  influence.  Hence  any  monistic  speculation, 
whether  predominatingly  idealistic  or  realistic,  which  treats 
slightingly,  or  annuls,  these  distinctions  is  destined  to  show 
rents  and  seams  when  viewed  in  the  light  of  a  full-orbed  experi- 
ence. The  cleavage  cannot  be  concealed  with  untempered  mor- 
tar; the  cleavage  is  made  more  distressingly  apparent  by  the 
very  attempt  at  concealment. 

There  are,  indeed,  two  fundamental  distinctions,   on  which 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  51 

all  human  experience  depends,  that  serve  as  the  exciting  causes 
of  the  perpetual  recurrence  of  dualistic  systems.  They  are 
the  distinction  between  matter  and  mind,  and  the  distinction 
between  moral  good  and  moral  evil.  It  is  the  fear  that,  if 
these  distinctions  are  made  less  effective  or  wholly  abrogated, 
disastrous  practical  results  will  follow,  which  drives  thinkers  of 
a  timid  speculative  character  away  from  every  form  of  monistic 
philosophy.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  have  the  fuller  cour- 
age of  confidence  in  human  reason  constantly  adhere  more 
closely  to  philosophical  monism.  Forms  of  monism,  therefore, 
which  do  not  accord  its  full  value  to  the  distinctions  between 
the  reality,  me,  and  the  reality  that  is  not-me,  cannot  prevent 
the  persistent  recurrence  of  rival  dualistic  schemes.  While  to 
blur,  diminish,  or  deny,  the  essential  and  eternally  true  distinc- 
tions of  a  moral  sort,  is  to  furnish  an  elixir  of  renewed  life  to 
an  expiring  dualism;  it  is  even  to  equip  it  with  an  avenging 
sword. 

The  task  of  Monism  with  reference  to  the  claims  of  all  con- 
tending dualistic  systems  is,  therefore,  not  obscure,  however 
difficult  it  may  be  of  successful  accomplishment.  These  claims 
must  be  admitted,  and  their  full  value  assigned  to  the  aspects, 
or  classes,  of  human  experience  in  which  the  claims  are  found. 
In  the  world  of  our  daily  experience,  material  bodies  and  their 
component  elements,  and  spiritual  agents  as  potent  forces,  must 
both  be  admitted  to  be  real  existences.  The  physical  and  the 
psychological  sciences  imply  and  involve  both  kinds  of  exist- 
ences. But  monism  must  discover,  and  as  far  as  possible  reveal, 
some  one  Principle,  some  supreme  Keality,  which  may  serve 
to  explain  and  interpret  both  kinds  of  existences,  in  their 
reciprocal  reactions  and  forms  of  behavior.  For  if  there  be  a 
Universe,  it  is  certainly  known  to  man  only  as  built  out  of  the 
two  kinds  of  existences.  The  distinctions  which  separate  the 
two  in  our  daily  experiences  of  both  cannot,  therefore,  be  held 
in  such  a  way  as  to  deny  the  oneness  of  the  work  in  which  the 
two  co-operate. 

Undoubtedly,  the  most  difficult  and  serious  work  which  any 


52  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

monistic  system  has  to  achieve  in  the  way  of  overcoming  the 
inconsistencies  of  dualism,  lies  on  ethical  ground.  Scientific 
dualism  must,  as  we  have  seen,  be  accorded  its  full  rights  on 
its  own  grounds.  These  are  the  grounds  of  so-called  "  common- 
sense  "  and  of  the  positive  sciences.  The  same  thing  cannot 
be  said,  however,  of  dualism  as  an  attempt  at  a  final  philoso- 
phy. Plainly,  one  world  cannot  be  accounted  for  as  the  prod- 
uct, or  the  expression,  or  the  evolution,  of  two  independent  and 
eternally  existent  principles.  Yet  more  plain,  and  even  shock- 
ingly plain,  is  the  truth  that  the  genesis  and  reality  of  moral 
evil  cannot  be  accounted  for,  in  such  a  way  as  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  rational  thought,  by  positing  an  eternal  principle 
of  evil  on  an  equality  with,  and  over  against,  a  good  God ;  or 
by  denying  in  any  way  the  constant  dependence  of  all  finite 
personality  upon  the  Life  of  God.  In  this  way  does  dualism 
introduce  the  germs  of  pain  and  trouble  at  the  very  beginnings 
of  monistic  philosophy,  in  both  its  realistic  and  its  idealistic 
forms  of  development. 

The  result  of  mixing  dualistic  considerations  with  those 
which  lead  to  realism  or  to  idealism  is  to  produce  a  further 
variety  of  intermediate  schools.  The  students  of  the  particular 
sciences  are  accustomed  in  these  days  to  disclaim  the  title  to 
authority,  and  even  the  pretence  of  interest,  in  subjects  lying 
outside  of  their  own  chosen  domain.  The  metaphysics  of 
chemistry  is  for  chemists;  the  metaphysics  of  physics  is  for 
physicists;  the  metaphysics  of  biology  is  for  biologists,  and  so 
on.  Especially  emphatic  is  the  disclaimer  of  knowledge  and 
interest  customarily  made  by  the  devotees  of  the  physical 
sciences  when  speaking  of  the  so-called  sciences  of  psychology 
and  ethics.  But  all  the  sciences  which  deal  with  material 
things  are  interdependently  related;  and  since  science  itself 
is  an  achievement  of  the  human  mind,  none  of  them  can  wholly 
disregard  the  discoveries  and  tenets  of  psychology.  Certain 
ethical  considerations  also  become  important  to  them  all,  as 
soon  as  we  regard  scientific  discovery  and  the  formulation  and 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  53 

defence  of  scientific  truth,  as  a  species  of  conduct.  It  happens 
inevitably,  then,  that  both  forms  of  monism  have  to  recognize 
the  claims  of  dualism.  But,  in  general,  realism  and  idealism 
recognize  the  dualistic  assumptions  and  experiences  in  different, 
or  diametrically  opposite,  ways.  Realism  inclines  strongly  to 
espouse  the  cause  of  matter;  idealism  to  espouse  the  cause  of 
mind.  Thus  materialistic  Monism  becomes  the  principal  school 
within  the  larger  school  of  Realists;  idealistic,  or  spiritual 
Monism  becomes  almost,  or  quite,  identical  with  the  entire  body 
of  Idealists.  The  former  tends  toward  determinism  and  em- 
piricism in  morals;  the  latter  decides  for  some,  at  least,  modi- 
fied theory  of  free-will,  and  for  a  certain  personality  independ- 
ent of  the  material  organism.  Thus  the  three  schools  of  philos- 
ophy (see  p.  44)  which  aim  to  find  the  explanation  and  inter- 
pretation of  all  experience,  in  some  one  Principle  (or  at  most 
two  principles),  become  still  further  differenced  by  many 
shades  of  opinion  held  by  mediating  schools. 

For,  in  truth,  the  extremes  of  both  Realism  and  Idealism 
serve  to  correct  each  other;  and  Dualism,  while  it  constantly 
preserves  its  right  and  its  power  to  intervene  and  check  a  too 
hasty  and  inconsiderate  synthesis,  must  uniformly  succumb, 
when  it  attempts  to  raise  itself  to  the  position  of  a  rational  and 
consistent  system.  The  perpetually  recurring,  but  never  fin- 
ished task  of  philosophy,  as  it  is  attempted  and  only  partially 
and  temporarily  accomplished  by  any  thinker  upon  its  problems, 
thus  becomes  clear.  It  is  to  discover  and  expound  such  a 
monistic  system  as  shall  both  satisfy  the  claims  of  a  scientific 
dualism,  and  also  interpret  the  world  of  experience  in  a  man- 
ner to  establish  the  reality  of  rational  ideals.  Our  human 
thinking  must  keep  itself  face  to  face  with  the  realities  of  ex- 
perience, from  its  first  beginning  all  the  way  toward  the  goal 
which  it  will  never  reach.  Its  desire  is,  by  humble,  docile,  in- 
dustrious, yet  free  and  critical  inquiry  to  know  Reality  in  the 
large,  to  understand  what  the  Being  of  the  World  really  is. 
It  must  never,  then,  for  one  moment  cease  to  welcome  facts,  or 


54  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

fail  to  learn  the  valid  conclusions  of  the  particular  and  positive 
sciences.  Philosophy  must  be,  and  must  remain,  realistic  to 
the  core.  But  reflective  thinking  soon  discovers  that  human 
ideals  in  science,  conduct,  art,  and  religion,  are  psychological 
and  spiritual  facts  and  forces — facts  most  indubitable,  forces 
most  potent  and  resistless  in  human  history  throughout.  These 
rational,  gesthetical,  and  moral  ideals,  reflective  thinking  sees  to 
be  more  or  less  clearly  suggested,  more  or  less  perfectly  realized, 
in  the  evolution  of  external  nature  and  in  the  development  of 
the  race.  Ideals,  too,  have  a  valid  claim  to  reality.  In  all 
concrete  realities  their  presence,  as  a  witness  to  immanent 
reason,  speaks  to  the  reason  of  inquiring  man.  Therefore,  phi- 
losophy cannot  fail  to  be  idealistic;  and  Idealism  in  some  one 
of  its  many  forms  has  always  been  the  "school"  (?)  which 
has  commanded  the  adherence  of  the  choicest  spirits,  as  well  as 
the  most  thoughtful  minds. 

For  these  reasons  it  is  that  schools  of  philosophy,  in  general, 
are  the  persistent  forms  in  which  the  efforts  at  solving  the  prob- 
lems of  philosophy  arrange  and  display  themselves.  But  the 
more  philosophically  complex  is  the  thinking  of  any  age  or  race, 
the  greater  the  number  of  the  carefully  graded  and  qualified 
groups  of  opinions  which  will  unite  together,  and  separate 
from  others,  the  adherents  of  these  so-called  schools.  There 
will  always  be  those,  however,  who  have  failed  to  think  their 
way  through  the  dividing  lines  and  forbidding  barriers  of  a 
common-sense  or  a  scientific  dualism  to  some  form  of  monism. 
And  there  will  always  be  those  who  have  obliterated  these  lines 
and  leaped  over  these  barriers,  in  their  determination  to  reach 
the  goal  of  monistic  philosophy  by  the  shortest  possible  path. 
In  any  form  of  monism  also,  there  must  be  either  elaborated 
or  concealed  elements  from  both  idealism  and  realism.  For  a 
purely  realistic  or  a  purely  idealistic  system  of  philosophy 
cannot  be  maintained.  Any  position  approaching  more  or  less 
nearly  to  that  of  complete  and  uncompromising  realism,  or  the 
same  kind  of  idealism,  is  tenable  only  as  a  momentary  point  of 


SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY  55 

standing.  For  the  goal  after  wliicli  tlio  liuman  mind  is  reach- 
ing is  such  an  elaborated  and  reasoned  conception  of  the  Being 
of  the  World,  as  shall  comprise  all  concrete  realities  and,  at 
the  same  time,  satisfy  man's  liighest  ideals. 

That  this  goal  has  never  been  reached  by  either  science  or 
philosophy  is  confessedly  true.  That  it  never  will  be  reached 
by  either  science  or  philosophy  is,  doubtless,  equally  true.  But 
the  spur  of  desire  to  go  forward  toward  it  is  not  less  effective 
because  of  the  distant  and  unattainable  cliaraoter  of  the  goal. 
Movement,  development,  is  the  very  life  and  satisfying  reward 
of  the  student  of  philosophy,  as  it  is  of  the  student  of  the  par- 
ticular sciences. 

Certain  practical  truths  which  have  to  do  with  our  aims  and 
method  in  the  study  of  philosophy  may  be  derived  from  this 
survey  of  the  nature  and  meaning  of  so-called  schools  in 
philosophy.  And,  first:  Neither  history  nor  modern  learning 
can  instruct  anyone  as  to  what  ready-made  system  of  philosophy 
he  should  adopt.  Much  less  can  one  safely  follow  the  exhorta- 
tion to  "  take  up  with  "  the  system  that'  "  finds  us  "■ — mean- 
ing by  this  the  system  which  most  strikes  one's  fancy  or  seems 
best  to  suit  one's  temperament  or  passing  mood.  For  those  in- 
clined to  suicide,  Schopenhauer  or  Nietzsche  may  indeed  seem 
to  speak  most  true.  To  men  who  do  not  care  to  think,  Prag- 
matism may  appear  the  least  expensive,  through-express  route 
to  the  terminal  station,  whose  station-master  is  the  realized  hope 
of  the  ages.  While  the  poet  will  continue  to  revel  well  content 
in  the  dreams  of  Plato  or  of  some  mystic  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  student  of  philosophy,  however,  should  be  eager  to  be 
taught,  but  not  easily  fooled.  The  distrust  which  he  has  of 
his  own  temperament  will  to  some  extent  measure  the  caution 
with  which  he  will  adopt  any  one  ready-made  system  of 
philosophy. 

And,  second,  the  student  of  philosophy  will  recognize  the  full 
significance  of  the  conviction  that  the  schools  of  thinking,  which 
result  from  diversities  of  method,  and  those  other  schools  which 


56  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

emphasize  differences  of  result,  must  all,  without  exception, 
have  a  large  measure  of  facts  and  truths  to  testify  in  their 
behalf.  Dogmatism,  scepticism,  criticism,  agnosticism — these 
are  all,  on  various  occasions  and  toward  various  assertions 
and  doctrines,  whether  in  science  or  philosophy,  proper  atti- 
tudes of  the  reflective  mind.  Dualism  and  monism,  whether  in 
the  form  of  realism  or  idealism,  stand  for  experiences  which  in 
themselves  considered  cannot  be  gainsaid;  and  which,  in  re- 
spect of  many  of  the  conclusions  derived  from  them,  cannot 
be  successfully  disputed  or  safely  disregarded.  There  is  a 
"  soul  of  truth  "  in  them  all,  and  so  far  as  we  can  see,  it  is 
an  ubiquitous  and  immortal  soul.  But  the  recognition  of  this 
truth  should  not  send  us  to  a  vender  of  half-baked  dough  or 
of  stale  crusts  for  our  bread.  The  facts  do  not  necessitate  a 
hotch-potch  of  pickings  from  many  different  authors  of  philo- 
sophical works.  By  thoughtful  study  of  the  masters  and  of  the 
truths  themselves,  we  may  find  our  own  way — if  not  to  a  com- 
pleted system  of  philosophy,  at  least  to  many  a  reasoned  philo- 
sophical opinion  affecting  profoundly  and  favorably  our  atti- 
tude toward  nature,  toward  God,  and  toward  humanity.  For 
philosophy,  like  science,  if  it  cannot  solve  all  its  own  problems, 
can  in  some  respects  tell  us  how  to  live  more  worthily  of  the 
rational  powers  with  which  we  are  equipped.  There  are  certain 
"  riddles  by  which  our  minds  are  oppressed  in  life,  and  about 
which  we  are  forcibly  compelled  to  some  view  or  other  in  order 
to  be  able  really  to  live  at  all."  And  as  a  modern  writer  has 
said :  "  We  have  to  distinguish  two  kinds  of  philosophy ;  the 
one  manifests  itself  by  the  speech,  and  the  other  by  the  con- 
duct, of  the  man.  .  .  .  The  latter  it  is — the  realization  of 
wisdom  by  the  man  in  his  social  intercourse — which  has  re- 
cently been  brought,  as  philosophy  in  deed,  to  more  general 
recognition." 


CHAPTER  IV 

PHILOSOPHY   OF  KNOWLEDGE:   THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL 

Philosophy  aims  at  a  certain  kind  and  degree  of  knowledge. 
Its  success  is,  therefore,  most  intimately  connected  with  a  cor- 
rect doctrine  of  knowledge.  What  is  it  to  know,  as  respects  the 
essential  characteristics  of  the  cognitive  act,  in  distinction  from 
conjecture,  opinion,  or  as  yet  unverified  theory  or  hypothesis? 
What  are  the  guaranties  of  knowledge ;  what  its  limits,  if  it  has 
limits;  and  what  are  its  underlying  principles  and  presupposi- 
tions? All  these  questions  either  lie  in  the  path  which  we 
must  traverse  in  order  to  form  an  adequate  and  safe  concep- 
tion of  philosophy ;  or  else  they  constitute  prominent  and  essen- 
tial parts  of  philosophy  itself.  The  first  in  this  series  of  ques- 
tions, is,  however,  the  rather  psychological  and  only  preliminary 
to  the  study  of  philosophical  problems.  The  others  belong  to 
that  department  of  philosophy  which  has  already  been  referred 
to  as  epistemology  or  the  theory  of  knowledge. 

There  has  been  much  idle  and  rather  fruitless  debate  as  to 
which  of  the  two — metaphysics  or  the  criticism  of  man's  know- 
ing faculty — ought  to  come  first  in  systematic  philosophy. 
Kant  and  his  disciples  have  argued  that  the  critique  of  reason 
must  precede  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of  reality ;  Hegel  and  his 
disciples  have  rejected  all  such  claims  of  criticism  to  prece- 
dence. Thus  with  the  former,  criticism  ending  in  scepticism 
is  accustomed  wholly  to  displace  a  systematic  ontology;  with 
the  latter,  logic  as  the  doctrine  of  the  self-evolution  of  reason, 
is  assumed  to  be  identical  with  metaphysics  as  the  theory  of 
reality.  Siding  with  the  one,  we  ask  ourselves:  How  can  I 
reason  with  confidence  about  the  ultimate  Reality,  unless   I 

67 


58  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

have  previously  determined  by  a  process  of  criticism,  the  capac- 
ity and  limits  of  human  reason?  How  can  I  say  what  the 
Being  of  the  World,  cxtra-mentally  or  really  considered,  is ;  un- 
less I  first  know  that  somehow  the  cognitive  faculty  has  appli- 
cation beyond  the  sphere  of  its  own  phenomena?  On  inclining 
to  the  other  side,  however,  I  ponder  well  such  inquiries  as  the 
following:  How  shall  I  criticize  reason  without  trust  in  the 
powers  of  the  very  reason  I  am  criticizing?  Surely  I  may  assume 
that,  without  trust  in  itself,  reason  can  neither  make  legitimate 
use  of  its  own  capacity,  nor  even  know  when  it  is  transcending 
this  legitimate  use.  There  is  no  other  critic  of  reason  than 
reason  itself.  Self-criticism  implies  self-confidence.  Or  to 
employ  a  well-worn  figure  of  speech :  How  shall  I,  being  a  man 
and  not  a  fish,  venture  into  the  water  without  first  knowing 
that  I  can  develop  the  capacity  to  swim?  But  how  shall  I 
surely  know  that  I  can  learn  to  swim,  unless  I  first  venture 
into  the  water? 

A  historical  survey  of  the  treatment  given  to  the  problems 
of  epistemology  and  of  metaphysics  proper  shows  that  they 
have  always  been  considered  and  solved  in  a  kind  of  mutual 
interdependence.  The  treatment,  however  brief  and  unsatis- 
factory on  any  writer's  part,  of  either  of  these  branches  of  phi- 
losophy shows  that  this  interdependence  is  essential  to  the 
nature  of  both.  It  does  not  much  matter,  then,  which  of  the 
two  is  treated  before  the  other;  if  only  in  the  treatment  of  each, 
the  bearings  of  the  intimate  relations  to  certain  problems  of  the 
other  are  kept  in  mind.  One's  metaphysics,  or  rather  one's 
entire  attitude  toward  any  theory  of  reality,  will  be  determined 
largely  by  one's  theory  of  knowledge;  one's  theory  of  knowledge 
will  always  be  compelled  to  pay  respect  to  one's  metaphysics. 
Which  shall  first  receive  technical  treatment  in  any  attempt  at 
systematic  philosophy  is  perhaps  a  matter  of  convenience. 

The  failure  to  give  full  credit  to  the  psychology  of  knowl- 
edge has  been  a  primitive  cause  of  failure  in  many  otherwise 
notable  schemes  of  epistemology.     Eminently  true  is  this  state- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  59 

ment  of  the  critical  philosophy  of  linmanuel  Kant,  the  founder 
of  the  modern  critical  school,  the  man  of  strong  faith  and 
lofty  ideals  in  morals  and  religion,  in  whose  name  and  ))y  force 
of  whose  genius,  however,  the  modern  movement  toward  an 
ethical  and  religious  agnosticism  has  largely  prevailed.  In 
all  his  critiques,  and  especially  in  his  marvellous  "  Kritik  of 
the  Pure  Reason,"  Kant  strives  in  the  interests  of  moral  and 
religious  truth  to  reconcile  the  rival  claims  of  the  extremes  of 
dogmatism  and  criticism.  The  effort  was  most  commendable; 
and  the  result  of  the  keen  and  profound  work  of  analysis  which 
this  great  thinker  performed,  and  of  the  new  view  of  the  most 
intricate  problems  of  philosophy  which  the  analysis  introduced, 
was  epoch-making  in  the  history  of  human  thought.  Beyond 
all  his  predecessors  Kant  conceived  of  the  problem  of  knowl- 
edge in  a  clear  and  comprehensive  way;  employed  the  critical 
method  in  its  solution  with  an  unparalleled  thoroughness;  and 
kept  to  tlie  end  a  tender  regard  for  the  elToet  of  his  answer  to 
the  problem  upon  the  moral  and  religious  faiths  of  mankind. 
What,  then,  was  the  cause  of  the  princi])al  defects  in  Kant's 
theory  of  knowledge ;  and  what  has  been  the  cause  of  similar 
defects  in  the  modifications  introduced  by  his  disciples  since 
his  time?  It  has  been  with  them,  as  it  was  with  their  master, 
a  lack  of  clear  insight  into  the  matter-of-fact  nature  and  the 
actual  development  of  cognitive  faculty  in  the  individual  and 
in  the  race.  In  a  word,  it  has  been  disregard,  almost  amount- 
ing to  contempt,  for  the  psychological  point  of  view.  It  was 
virtually  assumed  by  their  leader  that  w-e  know  the  world  by 
thinking  according  to  the  terms  of  pure  logic ;  or — more  tech- 
nically said — that  intellect  alone  constructs  the  world  of  real- 
ity, for  both  Things  and  ]\Iinds,  according  to  the  so-called 
"categories,"  or  constitutional  forms  of  its  own  functioning. 
Kant  did,  indeed,  hold  as  vital  to  his  theory  of  mediation,  that 
sense  and  intellect,  intuition  and  concept,  are  both  necessary 
to  knowledge.  His  celebrated  saying  ran  as  follows :  "  With- 
out intuition  concepts  are  empty,  without  conception  sense  is 


60  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

blind."  But  all  that  intuition  contributed  was  finally  reduced 
to  the  mere,  blind  impression  that  somewhat  extra-mentally 
real  exists;  and  even  this  impression  is  treated  as  though  it 
were  of  doubtful  validity  in  many  passages  of  the  critical 
philosophy.  Thus  knowledge  is  separated  by  an  unbridged 
gulf  from  reality,  and  is  reduced  to  the  methodical  arrange- 
ment of  so-called  phenomena.  Even  knowledge  of  the  Self 
is  confined  to  the  phenomenal  Ego;  my  true  and  real  Self 
is  as  much  hidden  to  my  own  cognition  as  is  the  reality  of  the 
external  world.  Intellect  manipulates  the  phenomena  so  as 
to  give  them  objectivity,  or  the  appearance  of  reality;  l)ut  the 
only  reality  known  to  man  is,  after  all,  the  reality  of  being 
objective,  an  object  of  the  intellect,  a  phenomenal  reality.  In 
the  large,  then,  we  have  to  say,  that  all  the  particular  sciences, 
both  physical  and  psychological,  are  only  the  intellect's  way  of 
connecting  together  phenomena ;  and  whether  they  truly  repro- 
duce, or  faithfully  represent,  the  Being  of  the  World,  as  It  is, 
and  the  processes  of  nature  as  they  are,  we  can  never  say. 
Thus  criticism  ends  in  scepticism  so  far  as  science  is  concerned. 
God,  freedom,  and  immortalitj^,  must  be  rediscovered  and  re- 
habilitated, as  it  were,  by  an  analysis  of  reason's  fundamental 
beliefs, — the  conceptions  guaranteed  by  a  rational  faith.  The 
inconsistencies  involved,  as  between  the  truths  affirmed  and  the 
truths  denied,  need  not  occupy  us  further  at  the  present  time. 
The  lesson  to  be  learned  from  the  result  of  criticism  in  its 
application  to  a  theory  of  knowledge  is  the  necessity  of  study- 
ing cognition  more  carefully  as  a  full-orbed  and  vital  activity 
of  the  human  soul.  We  use  the  old-fashioned  word  "  soul " 
because  we  mean  something  much  more  than  can  be  easily 
comprehended  under  the  words  mind,  or  intellect.  Instead 
of  knowledge  being  the  result  of  a  logical  arrangement  of 
phenomena  that  are  due  to  a  cause,  we  know  not  of  what  char- 
acter; knowledge,  the  rather,  comes  through  the  feeling-full 
commerce  of  an  intelligent,  self-conscious  will,  which  finds  it- 
self in  relations  of  action  and  reaction  with  other  purposeful 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  61 

wills.  This  is  the  fact  of  experience,  although  we  can  only  par- 
tially explain  it  as  fact.  This  is  the  truth  with  regard  to  the 
development  of  experience,  although  we  can  never  wholly  clear 
up  the  mystery  of  such  a  development.  But  all  origins  and 
forms  of  growth  defy  science  to  give  them  a  complete  and  final 
explanation;  and  not  least  of  all,  the  origin  and  growth  of 
knowledge  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

An  analysis  of  any  act  of  knowledge  shows  that  the  whole 
soul, — to  accept  the  customary  three-fold  division  of  so-called 
faculties — intellect,  feeling,  will,  is  involved  in  every  such  act. 
To  say  the  same  thing  in  another  way:  The  knower  is  an  in- 
telligent, self-conscious  agent,  knowing  himself  as  doing  some- 
thing, and  his  object  as  doing  something  to  him.  Lest  this 
division  of  the  soul  into  so-called  faculties  should  seem  to 
impair  its  unity,  and  to  cause  the  act  and  object  of  knowledge 
to  fall  to  pieces  or  disintegrate,  we  may  try  various  ways  of 
expressing  what  every  act  of  knowledge  implies  as  to  the 
knower.  In  knowledge,  the  knower  appears  to  himself  as  an 
active  and  sensitive  intellect.  The  knower  feels  sure  of  the 
existence  of  himself  and  of  his  object,  the  thing  known;  he  is 
certain  of  his  painful  or  pleasurable  feelings,  and  of  those 
feelings  we  call  sensations,  which  are  in  him  but  which  he 
nevertheless  attributes  to  the  object  as  their  external  cause. 
The  knower  is  above  all  an  intelligent  will.  He  knows  his 
object,  the  thing  known,  as  he  acts  upon  it,  moves  it,  moulds 
it,  makes  or  destroys  or  modifies  it ;  and  is  himself  moved, 
moulded,  or  otherwise  affected  by  it.  Without  intellect  there 
is  no  knowledge;  without  feeling  there  is  no  knowledge;  with- 
out doing,  and  experiencing  the  effects  upon  ourselves  and  our 
object,  of  this  doing,  there  is  no  knowledge.  And  yet,  these 
elements,  or  factors,  are  all  given  together  in  the  unity  of 
the  act  or  process  of  cognition. 

Still  bearing  in  mind  that  we  must  not  allow  our  analysia 
even  to  seem  to  separate  in  experience  what  is  really  united 
in  every  act  or  process. of  knowledge,  let  us  consider  the  truths 


63  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

stated  in  the  foregoing  sentences,  somewhat  more  in  detail. 
And  we  will  begin  with  a  brief  consideration  of  the  relation 
of  thinking  to  knowing. 

That  little,  if  any,  advance  in  knowledge  can  be  gained  with- 
out more  or  less  of  logically  correct  and  prolonged  thinking 
is  a  practical  maxim  which  no  one  familiar  with  the  successes 
of  modern  science,  or  the  requirements  of  modern  education, 
would  be  inclined  to  dispute.  And,  in  truth,  without  some 
thinking  no  knowledge  whatever  can  be  gained.  For  all 
knowledge  implies  judgment;  what  we  know,  or  think  we 
know,  we  judge  to  be  true.  Indeed,  knowledge  can  only  ex- 
press itself  in  terms  of  affirmative  or  negative  judgment,  in 
terms  of  Yes  or  No.  On  the  other  hand,  that  there  is  much 
knowledge  which  cannot  be  gained  by  mere  thinking  is  a 
maxim  scarcely  more  to  be  held  in  doubt.  And  most  of  what 
children  know — or  the  adults  who  for  the  most  part  belong  to 
the  unscientific  and  uncritical  minds — is  acquired  with  very 
little  thought  on  their  part.  They  learn  how  to  manage  their 
o'.vn  bodies,  and  so  indirectly  what  the  qualities  of  these  bodies 
are,  chiefly  by  an  unthinking  imitation.  They  are  told  the 
names  of  things,  and  know  them  by  believing  what  they  are 
told.  Even  the  elements  of  scientific  knowledge,  such  as  the 
race  has  acquired  by  many  centuries  of  experiment  and  think- 
ing, they  know  chiefly  by  remembering  what  they  have  been 
taught.  But  above  all  else,  in  order  to  get  a  true  conception 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  human  knowledge,  must  it  be  borne 
in  mind  that  the  human  being  learns  really  to  know  things 
only  as  he  has  dealings  with  them  by  actual  commerce  of 
energy,  that  causes  or  resists  the  impulse  to  motion.  His  toys, 
his  tools,  tlie  furniture  of  the  room,  the  objects  in  the  outside 
air,  the  reality  of  his  own  playmates  or  rivals  in  the  test  of 
strength,  the  boy  learns  to  know  by  a  life  full  of  motion,  due  to 
impulse  and  accompanied  and  followed  by  pleasure-pain  sensa- 
tions, rather  than  by  processes  of  a  correctly  logical  character. 
And  yet,  if  he  is  a  heedless,  unintelligent,  or  thoughtless  boy. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  63 

he  does  not  really  or  successfully  learn  to  know.  Thinking  is, 
then,  a  factor  indispensable  in  knowledge;  but  it  is  by  no 
means  the  whole  of  knowledge. 

If  now  we  try  to  describe  the  essential  nature  of  thought, 
as  thinking  becomes  an  essential  element  or  factor  in  all 
knowledge,  we  are  first  of  all  compelled  to  notice  this  fact: 
To  think  is  to  relate.  All  thinking  is  a  relating  activity. 
To  say  that  all  things  and  minds  are  known  only  as  related  to 
other  things  and  minds  is  a  truth  as  universal  as  it  is  barren 
of  concrete  scientific  results.  That  things  and  minds  are  neces- 
sarily known  as  standing  in  relations  follows  from  this  char- 
acteristic of  knowledge,  that  the  thinking  which  enters  into 
all  knowledge  is  a  relating  activity.  To  carry  the  description 
of  the  essential  nature  of  thinking  further  back  into  the  origin 
of  mental  life,  we  may  say  that  the  first  exhibition  of  intellect 
which  we  can  detect  in  the  human  infant  is  that  it  begins 
to  make  discriminations.  "  Discriminating  consciousness "  is 
the  primary  phase  of  the  so-called  faculty  of  thought.  In 
more  familiar  language,  the  child  commences  to  give  atten- 
tion to,  and  to  notice,  differences  and  resemblances.  Which 
of  these  two  forms  of  discrimination,  differencing  or  assimilat- 
ing, comes  before  the  other,  or  whether  they  are  not  neces- 
sarily and  invariably  joined  together,  is  a  matter  of  no  im- 
portance at  the  present  time.  But  the  result  of  the  two,  which 
are  different  sides  of  one  primal  activity  of  discrimination,  is 
to  establish  more  or  less  firmly  fixed  relations  within  the  field 
of  experience;  or  rather,  it  is  to  establish  experience  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  mere  series  or  jumble  of  unrelated  sensa- 
tions. 

This  primary  form  of  the  relating  activity  of  intellect,  these 
earliest  and  most  unintellectual  acts  of  discriminating  con- 
sciousness, do  not  constitute  knowledge  until  they  terminate 
in  more  or  less  definite  forms  of  judgment.  Without  the  ex- 
ercise of  judgment  there  is  no  knowledge.  To  know  is  to 
judge;  and  the  activity  in  judgment,  in  order  to  contribute  to 


64  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

knowledge,  must  be  purposeful.  The  earliest  judgments,  how- 
ever, are  in  the  form  which  is  sometimes,  and  not  inappro- 
priately, called  the  "  psychological  judgment,"  in  order  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  more  definitely  logical  judgment  with 
its  more  clearly  self-conscious  and  experience-full  recognition 
of  the  resemblances  and  differences  which  belong  to  classes  of 
objects.  Yet  in  all  judgment,  however  concrete  and  immature, 
there  is  recognition  of  qualities  and  modes  of  behavior  com- 
mon to  several  objects.  This  affirmative  or  negative  recogni- 
tion of  the  particular  thing,  as  coming  up,  or  failing  to  come 
up,  to  a  certain  standard  of  likeness,  is  essential  to  every, 
even  the  lowest  form  of  knowledge. 

It  must  also  be  noticed  that  the  activity  of  judging  is  a 
kind  of  synthesis.  It  is  a  putting  together  of  otherwise  di- 
verse elements  of  experience.  In  saying  this,  it  is  not  meant, 
of  course,  that  these  so-called  "  elements  of  experience  "  have 
a  separate,  concrete,  real  existence,  and  can  therefore  be  united 
by  some  agent  standing  outside  of  and  above  them,  as  chemical 
elements  may  be  synthesized  in  a  chemical  laboratory.  But 
the  judgment  recognizes  that  certain  qualities,  or  modes  of 
behavior,  which  may  exist  separately  from  each  other,  are  actu- 
ally united  in  some  particular  one  Thing.  The  one  book  is  red, 
and  heavy,  and  shaped  so,  etc. ;  it  is  somehow  a  synthesis  of 
several  qualities  like  those  belonging  to  other  books,  to  the 
toys,  to  some  stones  and  pieces  of  wood.  Judgment  is  reached, 
when  the  intellect  in  the  exercise  of  its  discriminating  activity, 
in  the  form  of  recognition,  accomplishes  a  corresponding  syn- 
thesis. In  all  the  earlier  acts  of  cognition  there  is  an  unre- 
flcctive  leap  to  judgment,  rather  than  the  arriving  at  judgment 
by  a  deliberate  and  purposeful  logic.  The  same  thing  is  true 
of  the  vast  majority  of  the  so-called  practical  judgments  of 
the  adult  mind.  But  such  is  the  essential  nature  of  all  judg- 
ment, and  such  the  part  which  the  activity  of  judgment  takes 
in  every  act  of  cognition,  that  we  may  lay  down  the  following 
principle:     Knowledge  is  horn  of  thinking  which  has  arrived 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  65 

at  the  paiusing  place  of  a  judgment — a  finished  product  of 
synthetic  activity. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  describe  the  develop- 
ment of  thinking  as  it  results  in  the  formation  of  so-called 
abstract  conceptions,  of  logical  judgments,  of  the  discovery 
and  statement  of  laws,  or  principles,  whether  as  applied  to 
things  or  to  minds,  and  of  scientific  system.  As  real  proc- 
esses gone  through  in  consciousness,  as  actual  performances 
of  the  knower,  they  all  no  more  resemble  the  formulas  of 
logic,  whether  expressed  in  words,  or  mathematical  terms,  or 
other  symbols,  than  the  actual  concrete  things  of  nature  re- 
semble the  most  schematic  representations  of  the  scientific  text- 
book or  the  drawings  of  the  lecturer  upon  the  blackboard.  In 
reality,  no  thing,  no  process,  no  transaction  between  things, 
answers  precisely  to  any  conception,  logical  judgment,  or 
statement  of  a  law.  In  reality  there  is  infinite  diversity,  and 
ceaseless  change.  This  is  true  whether  we  speak  of  the  real- 
ities which  we  know  in  external  nature,  or  the  realities  of  which 
we  become  aware  through  the  consciousness  of  self.  Yet  with- 
out this  kind  of  thought,  which  calls  itself  abstract,  there  could 
be  none  of  that  kind  of  knowledge  which  calls  itself  science. 
The  faculty  of  abstraction  and  generalization  is,  then,  essential 
to  science.  Its  faiths,  and  guiding  principles,  and  necessary 
presuppositions,  must  be  subjected  to  critical  examination  in 
other  connections. 

That  thinking  alone  can  never  result  in  knowing,  and  that 
thought  is  not  the  whole  of  knowledge,  has  been  implied  in 
much  which  has  already  been  said  about  the  activity  of  know- 
ing, and  the  nature  of  thought.  The  very  word  "  activity," 
and  the  terms  "  discriminating  consciousness,"  "  judging  fac- 
ulty," etc.,  imply  the  presence  of  will  in  all  knowledge.  We  do 
not,  indeed,  approve  of  this  word  "  Will  "  to  express,  as  it  were, 
a  separate  faculty,  or  class  of  faculties,  of  the  human  soul. 
The  rather,  in  psychology  as  in  ethics  would  we  call  attention 
to  the  patent  truth  that  the  very  essence  of  the  soul,  so  to  say, 


66  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

is  to  be  a  will ;  that  for  man,  to  be  is  to  be  an  intelligent 
agent.  By  affirming  that  will  is  present  in  all  knowledge, 
therefore,  it  is  intended  to  teach  the  truth  that  all  the  processes 
which  result  in  knowledge  are  active  processes.  Never  is  the 
knower  merely  the  passive  recipient  of  impressions.  Always, 
on  the  contrary,  is  the  knower  an  active  agent,  a  producer 
of  his  own  knowledge. 

This  active  aspect  of  all  knowledge  reveals  itself  chiefly  in. 
two  ways.  The  first  of  these  is  purposeful,  selective  attention. 
In  the  beginnings  of  knowledge  the  direction  and  fixation  of 
attention  are  largely  forced;  they  are  determined  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  object  with  respect  to  the  intensity  of  the  sensa- 
tions which  it  awakens,  and  the  character,  and  strength  of 
interest  its  presence  awakens  in  the  observing  mind.  But  with- 
out a  certain  degree  of  voluntary  and  selective  attention,  as 
we  have  reason  to  believe,  no  knowledge,  even  of  the  most  pri- 
mary sort,  can  be  gained  through  sensory  impressions.  Tho 
whole  doctrine  of  attention,  as  it  is  elaborated  for  purposes  of 
success  in  education  and  in  scientific  discovery,  emphasizes  the 
part  which  voluntary  and  selective  attention  plays  in  the  ac- 
quisition and  development  of  knowledge,  A  dilferent  set  of 
words  for  each  sense  makes  emphatic  for  the  popular  mind  a 
distinction  which  involves  the  same  important  truth.  Look 
intently  and  carefully  observe,  if  you  would  know  by  seeing; 
listen  and  note  well,  if  you  would  learn  by  hearing;  touch 
and  handle  attentively,  if  you  would  discover  the  tactual  and 
muscular  qualities  of  things.  In  gaining  knowledge  by  experi- 
ment, whether  in  the  study,  shop,  or  laboratory,  or  on  the 
street  and  in  the  field,  you  must  give  attention;  you  must  se- 
lect the  materials  and  conditions  and  control  of  your  experi- 
mentation, if  you  would  have  it  result  in  additions  to  vour 
knowledge. 

Quite  as  obvious  in  respect  of  its  importance  for  the  growth 
of  knowledge  is  another  example  of  its  dependence  upon  the 
will  of  the  knower.     So  conclusively  has  modern  psychology 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  67 

demonstrated  the  part  of  the  motor  system  in  its  relation  to 
all  our  sensory  impressions,  that  the  very  word  impressions 
can  no  longer  be  applied  to  experiences  with  its  old  signifi- 
cance. Sensations  never  arise  as  impressions  without  an  ac- 
companiment of  motor  activity,  or  of  the  revived  images  of 
previous  motor  activities.  Seeing  is  never  merely  the  receiving 
of  visual  impressions.  Hearing,  the  apparently  most  passive 
of  our  senses,  is  never  merely  the  receiving  of  auditory  impres- 
sions. Active  touch  with  contracting  and  relaxing  muscles, 
moving  limbs,  and  a  constant  readjustment  of  the  organs  to 
one  another  and  to  outside  objects,  are  indispensable  to  all 
growths  of  knowledge,  both  of  ourselves  and  of  things.  And 
just  as  there  is  no  ordinary  and  so-called  practical  knowledge 
without  activity,  under  control  by  the  motor  organism  of  the 
knower,  so  there  is  no  physico-chemical  or  biological  or  other 
form  of  science,  without  the  same  kind  of  activity.  In  manipu- 
lating things,  we  know  that  they  really  are,  and  what  they 
are.  In  moving  our  own  bodies  we  know  that  we  are  and  that 
we  are  not  the  things  which  we  know  to  be  not-ourselves, 
chiefly  through  the  differences  in  their  relations  toward  our 
power  to  produce  motor  changes  in  them.  Even  the  pure  sci- 
ence of  mathematics  could  not  come  into  existence,  since  its 
essence  consists  in  the  act  of  counting,  unless  we  were  ourselves 
capable  of  control  over  a  motor  organism.  And  all  the  applied 
mathematics,  the  numbering  and  measuring  of  natural  forces, 
depends  upon  this  same  form  of  purposeful  activity  in  the 
knower.  Only  beings  that  have  wills  of  their  own  can  know. 
And  the  beings  which  these  will-full  beings  know  as  other  than 
themselves,  are  known  only  as  they  are  recognized  in  terms  of 
opposing   wills. 

We  shall  see,  subsequently,  that  it  is  this  experience  with 
ourselves  as  active  agents,  as  wills,  producing  effects  in  other 
and  different  active  agents,  or  opposing  wills,  on  which  all 
man's  knowledge  of  the  real  world  depends.  Indeed,  without 
just  such  an  experience,  no  real  and  substantial  world  could 


68  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

be  known;  for  no  real  knower,  and  no  real  world  to  be  known, 
could  exist.  To  be  real  is  to  be  active,  to  do  something,  to 
produce  and  to  experience  change.  Dead  and  inactive  sub- 
stances are  not  substances,  are  not  realities  at  all.  But  above 
all  is  it  true  that  such  purely  hypothetical  and  dead  entities, 
mythical  beings,  if  existent,  could  not  be  knowers.  For  knowl- 
edge implies  voluntary  activity  in  the  direction  and  fixation 
of  attention,  and  in  the  control  of  a  motor  organism  that  can 
be  made  to  assume  a  variety  of  relations  toward  other  selves 
and  toward  things. 

The  principal  deficiencies  of  that  sceptical  theory  of  knowl- 
edge which  resulted  from  the  Kantian  criticism  are  due  to  a 
failure  to  recognize  the  important  part  played  by  the  feelings 
in  every  act  of  cognition.  Intellect,  in  Kant's  restricted  usft 
of  the  word,  if  left  to  itself,  would  be  as  blind  as  feeling  alone 
is  blind.  Pure  activities  of  reason  could  only  give  a  world  as 
unreal  and  illusory  as  that  Maya  which  is  regarded  as  a  fieet- 
ing  show  of  sensory  impressions  separated  from  the  immanent 
reason  and  will  which  is  truly  manifested  in  them  all. 

The  manifold  ways  in  which  feeling,  not  only  influences 
knowledge,  but  also  enters  into  the  very  constitution  of  every 
act  of  cognition,  are  difficult  to  analyze;  they  can  be  described 
only  in  terms  which  make  an  appeal  to  the  immediate  experi- 
ences in  which  the  feelings  consist.  For,  strictly  speaking, 
no  form  of  feeling  can  be  defined ;  nor  can  knowledge  be  gained 
by  mere  description  as  to  what  it  actually  is.  The  essence  of 
feeling  is  in  its  being  felt.  This  is  conspicuously  true  of  that 
knowledge  of  ourselves  which  comes  only  through  experiences 
of  feeling.  What  is  it  to  be  a  human  soul  ?  Surely,  this  ques- 
tion can  never  be  fully  answered  by  describing  the  processes 
of  reason,  or  by  analyzing  and  criticizing  the  categories,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Kantian  critique  or  of  the  Hegelian  logic. 
To  be  a  soul  is  to  love,  to  hate,  to  aspire,  to  long  for,  to 
grieve  for,  to  suffer  the  various  complex  forms  of  appetite, 
passion  and  sentiment,  which  have  most  to  do  with  individual- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  69 

izing  the  human  race,  and  with  determining  the  social  relations 
and  achievements  of  each  individual  in  the  race.  What  is  true 
in  the  most  absolute  manner  of  these  fundamental  forms  of 
feeling  is  relatively  true  of  the  various  shadings  and  secondary 
varieties  of  the  same  feelings  as  they  are  differenced  by  the 
different  social  relations.  Thus  the  feelings  of  the  parent, 
of  the  lover,  of  the  friend,  must  be  experienced  in  order  to 
know  what  it  is  really  to  be  parent,  lover,  or  friend.  To  re- 
gard these  experiences  as  merely  phenomenal  of  an  unknown 
substance,  the  existence  and  qualities  of  which  must  be  estab- 
lished by  argument,  and  sustained  by  philosophical  criticism, 
is  to  juggle  with  experience.  In  having  such  experiences  the 
soul  IS  real;  in  that  intuitive  recognition  of  them,  which  self- 
lonsciousness  not  only  implies  but  in  which  self -consciousness 
consists,  the  soul  knows  that  it  is,  and  what  it  is. 

Among  these  feelings — or  shall  we  not  rather  say,  as  a 
"  tone  "  characterizing  them  all — are  our  various  degrees  and 
kinds  of  pleasures  and  of  pains.  It  was  a  favorite  contention 
of  the  philosopher  Lotze  that  self-conscious  personality  was 
impossible  without  the  experience  of  pleasure  and  pain.  How- 
ever this  may  be  as  a  matter  of  abstract  reasoning  with  regard 
to  the  possible  and  the  impossible,  there  can  be  no  considerable 
doubt  about  the  matter  of  fact.  It  is  as  beings  experiencing 
pleasure  and  pain  by  adjusting  ourselves  to  changing  relations 
with  other  beings  that  we  come  to  know  what  we  are  ourselves, 
and  what  manner  of  world  constitutes  our  environment.  The 
pleasure  and  the  pain  are  peculiarly  ours;  they  cannot  be 
attributed  to  other  subjects  than  ourselves.  We  may  modify 
them  by  changing  the  point  of  regard,  by  varying  the  object 
on  which  attention  is  concentrated.  We  may  avoid  or  remove 
them  by  changing  our  relations  to  their  causes.  But  so  often 
as  they  recur,  and  as  long  as  they  persist,  the  pleasure  and 
the  pain  are  known  as  really  and  undoubtedly  our  very  own.  I 
am  therefore  known  to  myself  as  a  being  capable  of  enjoying 
pleasure  and  of  suffering  pain.     Indirectly  also,  through  these 


70  KNOWLEDGE,    LIFE,    AND    REALITY 

experiences  of  pleasure-pain,  we  greatly  increase  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  of  things.  The  child  and  the  savage  attribute 
to  things  the  capacity  for  pleasure-pain  as  confidently  and 
promptly  as  the  capacity  for  purposeful  activity.  The  same 
conception  of  a  reality  which  is  by  its  very  nature  full  of  feel- 
ing, is  as  firmly  held  by  poetry  and  pictorial  art  to-day  as  it 
was  ever  held  in  the  most  primitive  times.  Religion,  from 
the  earliest  records  of  its  views  down  to  the  most  recent  the- 
ology, believes  in  the  "whole  creation  groaning  and  travailing 
together  " ;  it  also  believes  in  a  suffering  God.  As  to  the  sci- 
entific validity  of  this  conception  of  things  not-ourselves  being 
subjects  of  pleasure  and  pain,  in  the  case  of  those  animals 
which  are  organically  complex,  we  do  not  doubt.  Only  as  we 
know  them  by  interpreting  their  motions  as  signs  of  feelings 
similar  to  our  own,  do  we  know  them  as  they  really  are.  They 
have  appetites,  passions,  desires,  and  even  some  measure  of 
the  higher  intellectual  feelings,  such  as  curiosity,  interest,  etc. 
Indeed,  the  only  conception  which  we  can  frame  of  actual 
experiences  in  either  man  or  animal,  corresponding  to  the 
vague  and  indeterminate  word,  "instinct,"  is  given  in  terms 
of  feeling  rather  than  of  ideation  or  thought. 

Most  prominent  of  all  the  experiences  on  which  we  base 
our  knowledge  that  we  are,  and  what  we  are,  and  our  knowl- 
edge of  things,  that  they  are,  and  what  they  are,  is  the  so- 
called  "  feeling  of  effort,"  From  the  physiological  point  of 
view,  this  feeling"  is  correlated  with  nervous  processes  both 
centrally  and  peripherally  initiated.  The  substance  of  the 
brain,  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  life  of  the  brain,  is  al- 
ways active;  the  substance  of  the  brain,  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  life  of  sensation,  is  always  being  stirred  to  activity 
by  sensory  impulses  from  parts  of  the  body  external  to  itself. 
In  our  complex  experience,  we  know  that  we  are  real,  and  that 
things  are  real,  because  we  know  that  we  are  striving,  and  that 
our  striving  is  opposed.  This  knowledge,  in  both  its  aspects, 
is  dependent  upon  an  analysis  of  the  complex  feeling  of  effort. 


PHILOSOPHY    OF    KNOWLEDGE  71 

By  willing  changes  in  things,  and  in  our  relations  to  them 
or  in  their  relations  to  one  another,  and  by  having  to  work  in 
order  to  effect  these  changes,  we  know  both  ourselves  and 
them.  On  the  side  of  will,  or  voluntary  activity,  this  factor 
of  knowledge  has  already  been  referred  to.  But  our  activity 
is  never  in  its  results  a  pure  and  unopposed  activity.  Our 
will  meets  in  things  a  somewhat  that  wills  not  as  we  will. 
The  emotional  element  in  the  transaction  is  the  feeling  of 
effort.  The  inference  is  a  leap  of  the  intellect  to  an  external 
cause.  Thus  it  is  that  knowledge  of  all  realities  combines  feeling 
and  intellect. 

The  entire  theory  of  localization,  both  of  the  different  parts 
of  the  bodily  organism  and  of  external  things  in  spatial  rela- 
tions to  this  organism,  is  based  upon  the  fact  that  active  "  dis- 
criminating consciousness  "  takes  account  of  an  infinite  variety 
in  the  grades  and  shades  of  the  experience  of  feeling.  Neither 
the  plain  man  nor  the  man  of  science  gets  his  first  information 
as  to  where  things  are,  and  as  to  what  is  their  size,  their 
shape  and  relation  to  other  things,  by  processes  of  reason- 
ing about  them.  He  looks,  or  listens,  or  feels,  to  discover 
where  they  really  are.  So  integral  and  inseparable  a  part  of 
the  complex  transaction  called  knowledge  of  location,  is  the 
emotional  element  that  we  express  it  all  even  more  truly  in 
terms  of  feeling  than  in  terms  of  intellect.  The  child  feels 
tlie  difference  between  right  arm  and  left,  between  leg  and 
either  arm ;  between  breast  and  back,  and  toe  and  finger,  etc. 
In  cases  where  the  knowledge  is  not  gained  by  sight  we  natu- 
rally express  the  action  in  terms  of  feeling.  But  psychology 
gives  us  to  know  that  the  delicate  shades  of  feeling  which  ac- 
company and  control  the  positions  and  movements  of  the  two 
eyes  are  an  indispensable  part  of  localization  by  vision.  In 
all  tlie  grosser  operations  of  obtaining  the  direction,  size,  shape, 
and  relations  in  space  of  large  or  distant  objects,  motions  of 
the  eyes,  over  different  arcs,  and  even  of  the  head  and  trunk, 
with  their  accompanying  changes  in  localization  feelings,  are 


72  KNOWLEDGE,    LIFE,    AND    REALITY 

an  indispensable  factor  in  the  whole  transaction.  The  more 
refined  measurements  of  science,  which  are  customarily  made 
in,  or  reduced  to,  terms  of  the  visual  sense,  are  dependent 
throughout  on  the  same  kind  of  discrimination  of  feelings,  or 
feeling  of  discriminations, — we  may  use  either  term  with  al- 
most equal  propriety.  It  is  only  when  we  rise  into  the  world 
of  concepts,  on  which  all  experimental  science  even  has  its 
eye,  that  reasoning  with  abstract  thoughts  and  symbols,  brings 
growth  of  knowledge  about  the  real  world  to  the  human  mind. 

Two  classes  of  the  more  definitely  "  intellectual  feelings  " 
may  be  recognized  in  this  connection.  These  are  such  as  spur 
the  intellect,  and  such  as  accompany,  guide,  and  estimate  its 
activities.  The  feeling  of  intellectual  curiosity  is  not,  indeed, 
an  integral  part  of  every  act  of  cognition;  it  can  scarcely  be 
spoken  of  as  an  essential  factor  or  concomitant  of  all  knowl- 
edge. But  it  incites  to  those  activities,  of  both  an  intellectual 
and  an  emotional  sort,  which  determine,  in  the  individual  and 
in  the  race,  the  attainment  and  the  growth  of  knowledge. 
Under  its  influence  the  child  searches  into  the  nature  and  uses 
of  things.  To  it,  far  more  than  to  any  selfish  or  mercantile 
motive,  modern  science  owes  its  splendid  triumphs.  Of  its 
possible  intensity  Augustine  bore  witness  when  he  declared : 
"  My  soul  is  on  fire  to  know."  Plato  made  desire,  or  Eros, 
the  only  avenue  to  philosophy;  and  the  Prussian  Queen  was 
eager  to  die  that  she  might  know  the  things  which  even 
Leibnitz  could  not  tell  her. 

There  are  certain  feelings,  however, — and  those  of  the 
higher  nature, — which  enter  in  an  integrating  way  into  the 
very  substance  of  knowledge.  One  class  of  these  may  be  called 
logical.  There  are  peculiar  feelings  with  which  we  affirm,  and 
different  feelings  with  which  we  deny.  Even  when  we  are,  as 
we  are  accustomed  to  say,  intellectually  convinced,  we  cannot 
make  a  genuine  affirmation  or  denial  without  an  experience  of 
these  feelings.  Affirmation  and  denial  are  even  connected  with 
definite  forms  of  feeling  dependent  upon  bodily  attitudes.    The 


PHILOSOPHY    OF    KNOWLEDGE  73 

smooth,  logical  flow  of  our  trains  of  thought  is  partly  a  mat- 
ter of  feeling;  hitches,  or  pauses,  in  these  trains  are  emo- 
tional as  well  as  intellectual  attitudes  of  the  mind.  Feelings 
of  recognition,  feelings  of  attraction  or  repulsion,  feelings  of 
certainty  or  uncertainty,  enter  into  every  process  of  thought. 

Feelings  of  satisfaction  do  not  simply  announce  and  guar- 
anty for  us  the  solution  of  a  problem;  they  constitute  an  im- 
portant part  of  the  solution  itself.  It  is  with  no  vain  or  un- 
meaning voice  that  we  inquire  after  the  truth  of  a  proposition 
by  asking :  "  Are  you  satisfied  with  the  correctness  of  your 
solution  ?  "  In  the  ultimate  tests  of  all  truth,  both  the  ap- 
parent correctness  of  the  logical  processes  involved,  and  the 
steadfast  character  of  the  emotions  which  the  result  evokes, 
combine  to  constitute  what  we  call  a  satisfactory  issue  of  the 
inquiry. 

The  demand  for  a  cause,  with  all  the  stimulus  which  this 
demand  affords  to  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  race, — of 
which,  indeed,  it  is  the  principal  and  the  perennial  source — 
is  an  experience  of  an  emotional  rather  than  of  an  ideational 
type.  As  we  shall  see  later,  it  is  in  the  feeling-full  experience 
of  ourselves  as  wills  that  the  notion  of  cause  has  its  origin. 
The  so-called  principles  of  "  suflScient  reason  "  is  no  outgrowth 
of  ratiocination.  If  it  were  such,  it  could  never  seem  to  let 
us  into  the  mystery  of  the  constitution,  and  relations  of  ac- 
tion and  reaction,  of  different  kinds  of  energies,  which  we,  of 
necessity,  believe  we  find  in  the  real  world.  Here  Schopen- 
hauer's sharp  criticism  of  Kant  for  dismissing  the  part  which 
feeling  plays  in  giving  "  objectivity "  to  phenomena  with  the 
sentence,  "  Objects  are  given  to  us  through  our  sensibility," 
is  not  without  justification.  And  to  speak  of  any  reality, 
Thing  or  Self,  as  though  it  were  merely  a  thought-object  is 
to  be  false  to  the  full  content  of  the  simplest  act  of  cognition. 
The  rather  is  Eiehl  justified  in  saying:  "For  being  is  in  no 
wise  a  constituent  of  an  idea;  it  is  experienced,  felt,  lived, 
not  ideated  or  thought." 


74  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

The  mighty  part  which  sesthetical  feelings  play  in  all  our 
knowledge  of  the  world  has  rarely,  or  never,  been  sufficiently 
estimated  by  either  psychology  or  philosophy.  That  our  judg- 
ments about  the  beauty  of  natural  objects,  as  well  as  the  beauty 
of  works  of  art,  are  chiefly  prompted  and  guided  and  made  in 
terms  of  sesthetical  emotions,  has  indeed  been  recognized  by 
writers  on  aesthetics  and  by  students  of  art.  This  fact  has 
also  frequently  been  appealed  to  as  an  argument  for  the  purely 
subjective  character  of  such  judgments.  This  scepticism  affirms 
that  beauty  is  in  man  as  a  matter  of  appreciative  feeling  only; 
but  it  denies  that  beauty  is  in  nature,  as  a  quality  of  the 
external  object.  How  inadequately  this  assthetical  scepticism 
answers  to  the  psychological  analysis  of  the  judgment  which 
affirms  beauty,  and  also  to  our  philosophical  notion  of  what 
the  Being  of  the  World  really  is,  as  known  in  terms  of  this 
judgment,  will  be  made  clear  in  a  subsequent  chapter.  At 
present  we  are  calling  attention  to  a  yet  more  general  and 
important  truth  connected  with  the  psychological  view  of 
knowledge,  ^sthetical  feeling  enters  into  the  very  substance 
of  knowledge.  Both  truths  of  fact  and  also  many  fanciful 
departures  from  truth  of  fact  are  apprehended  and  appre- 
ciated with  a  certain  glow  of  feeling  which  is  gesthctical  in 
character.  It  is  largely  the  satisfaction,  which  the  myths  and 
legends  and  fanciful  conceptions,  both  religious  and  non-re- 
ligious, give  to  sesthetical  feeling,  that  causes  them  to  be  re- 
garded as  true.  The  fair  and  sesthetically  pleasing,  or  the 
terrible  and  sesthetically  appalling  or  awe-inspiring,  has  the 
preference  for  human  minds,  over  such  conceptions  and  judg- 
ments as  afford  no  obvious  point  of  contact  with  man's  artistic 
emotions. 

To  suppose  that  modern  science  has  excluded  or  diminished 
the  active  and  efficient  presence  of  sesthetical  feeling  in  our 
conceptions  of  nature  and  of  humanity  is  a  serious  mistake. 
On  the  contrary,  the  nobler  and  higher  forms  of  these  emo- 
tions were  never  before   so   obvious   and   powerful   as   in  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  75 

positive  sciences  of  the  present  day.  More  and  more  these 
sciences  are  all  being  re-constructed  in  terms  corresponding 
to  assthetical  ideals.  Order,  proportion,  infinity  and  the  in- 
finitesimal, the  reign  of  law,  the  unity  which  is  through  in- 
finite variety,  the  conception  of  the  all-embracing,  all-produc- 
ing Ether,  the  very  mystery  and  awfulness  of  the  liinitless 
areas  of  time  and  space  in  which  ceaseless  changes,  involving 
life  and  death  to  countless  beings  in  innumerable  worlds, — 
these  are  all  constructs  of  imagination  which  are  l)orn  of 
aBsthetical  emotions  and  which  forcefully  appeal  to  the  mother 
whose  children  they  are.  That  science  is  constantly  advancing 
in  the  proofs  of  their  realization  in  the  Being  of  the  World 
is  scientific  evidence  that  this  Being  is  itself  constituted  after 
the  type  furnished  to  our  minds  by  sesthetical  ideals.  That 
science,  in  spite  of  seeming  proofs  of  many  exceptions  to  these 
ideals,  still  trusts  its  power  in  the  future  to  reconcile  the  con- 
flicts produced  by  these  exceptions,  is  evidence  that  the  knowl- 
edge which  calls  itself  "  science "  is  influenced  and  shaped 
by  the  emotions  which  recognize  the  value  for  reality  of  these 
ideals. 

That  ethical  and  religious  emotions  take  no  insignificant 
part  in  many  forms  of  human  knowledge  could  easily  be  made 
equally  clear.  But  the  evidence  for  this  truth  is  more  conveni- 
ently to  be  examined  when  we  are  treating  of  the  subjects  of 
moral  philosophy  and  the  philosophy  of  religion. 

Two  important  truths  for  our  theory  of  knowledge  may  be 
deduced  from  this  survey  of  the  nature  of  knowledge  as  viewed 
from  the  point  of  standing  taken  by  the  psychologist.  And, 
first:  Knowing  involves,  in  a  living  commerce,  all  the  so- 
called  faculties  of  the  human  soul.  It  is  not  thinking  alone, 
or  feeling  alone,  or  willing  alone.  Indeed,  neither  of  these 
so-called  faculties  can  even  have  the  part  it  plays  in  knowledge 
accurately  described  without  reference  to  both  the  others.  In- 
tellect is  active  and  feeling-full,  in  all  cognition.  Feeling 
must   prompt,   guide,   and   accompany   a   more   or   less   volun- 


76  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tary  process  of  thought,  in  order  that  cognition  may  be  the 
result.  Will  must  direct  attention  and  control  the  motor  or- 
ganism, in  the  intellect's  feeling-full  effort  to  discriminate  the 
qualities  of  the  object,  and  to  judge  its  relation  to  other  ob- 
jects. To  say  all  this  is,  indeed,  a  weak  and  imperfect  and 
halting  way  of  describing  that  complex  and  mysterious  achieve- 
ment which  we  call  our  knowledge.  For  the  soul  unites  in  a 
single  grasp  of  consciousness  those  many  and  subtile  forms 
of  her  behavior,  which  psychological  science,  with  all  its 
mechanism  for  analysis,  can  only  partially  detect  and  faultily 
describe.  But,  however  lame  in  its  description  science  may 
be — and  this  impotency  to  match  successfully  the  speed  and 
complexity  and  hidden  art  of  nature's  processes  is  not  con- 
fined to  psychological  science — every  plain  man,  who  has  ar- 
rived at  adult  self-consciousness,  knows  to  some  good  purpose 
what  it  is  for  him  to  know.  It  is  sorry  work  for  the  psycholo- 
gist to  be  ceaselessly  trying  to  show  how  that  cannot  be  true, 
which  everybody  knows  is  true;  how  the  soul  cannot  possibly 
do  wliat  every  knower  is  immediately  aware  of  the  potency 
and  the  fact  of  himself  as  doing.  But  this  is  what  the  ex- 
tremes of  an  idealistic  egoism  and  of  a  crude  common-sense 
realism  in  psychology  both  are  fond  and  proud  of  seeming  to 
accomplish.  The  one  cannot  conceive  how  a  merely  ideating 
subject  can  Jcnow  a  material  object;  the  other  cannot  conceive 
how  a  real  thing  can  become  the  object  of  an  ideating  Ego. 
But  in  truth  and  reality,  the  knower  is  not  a  mere  ideating 
subject  but  an  embodied  thinking,  feeling,  willing  Soul;  and 
the  object  known  is  no  construct  of  dead  matter,  but  an  incor- 
porate idea.  In  all  knowing,  subject  and  object  are  not  loosely 
and  indirectly  joined  by  inference  or  idea;  they  are  united 
in  terms  of  an  active  commerce  which  serves  to  express  more 
or  less  fully  the  characteristic  being  of  each.  What  it  is  to 
know  cannot  be  known  by  any  analysis  of  the  categories; 
what  it  is  to  know,  in  order  to  be  known,  must  be  experienced 
as  a  complex,  vital  fact. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  77 

The  second  truth  is  this:  In  knowledge,  reality  and  idea  are 
not  separated  and  so  in  need  of  being  subsequently  united  by 
judgment,  conception,  inference,  or  syllogism.  The  finished 
act  of  knowledge  leaves  no  gap  between  the  real  and  the  ideal 
which  science  or  speculation  must  subsequently  see  to  having 
bridged.  In  every  act  of  knowledge,  the  idea  and  the  reality 
are  present  in  the  very  act  itself.  Is  it  knowledge  of  myself 
that  I  am  gaining?  The  very  nature  of  the  activity  called 
self-conscious  is  such  that  it  grasps  together  the  Self  as  sub- 
ject and  the  Self  as  object,  in  the  unity  of  one  cognitive  proc- 
ess. Tlie  proof  that  this  cannot  be,  which  is  derived  from  the 
abstract  possibility  of  dividing  up  the  time  required  to  come 
to  self-consciousness  into  an  infinite  number  of  infinitesimal 
moments,  is  as  silly  from  the  points  of  view  held  by  both  com- 
mon-sense and  genuine  science,  as  was  the  argument  of  the 
ancient  sceptics  that  Achilles  could  not  overtake  the  tortoise. 
The  vaster  part  of  human  knowledge,  both  of  Selves  and  of 
Things,  is  indeed  not  of  this  so-called  intuitive  or  immediate 
sort.  It  is  remotely  inferential  and  composed  of  more  ot  less 
doubtful,  or  if  true,  only  approximate  inferences  explanatory 
of  these  intuitive  experiences.  It  results  in  constructing  a 
Being  of  the  World  in  terms  of  a  complex  metaphysical  the- 
ory. But  it  must  all  be  referred  for  its  support  back  to  the 
immediate  knowledge  which  results  from  an  intuitive  but  com- 
plex and  developmental  process  of  cognition. 


CHAPTER  V 

KINDS,  DEGREES,  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

So  far  as  the  essential  forms  of  mental  life  which  enter 
into  the  act  of  cognition  are  concerned,  there  is  only  one  kind 
of  knowledge.  The  amounts  of  voluntary  control  of  atten- 
tion and  of  the  bodily  organism,  the  intensity  and  variety  of 
the  feelings,  and  the  proportion,  so  to  say,  of  intuition  and  of  in- 
ference, may  vary  greatly;  but  the  character  of  the  total  proc- 
ess and  of  its  resulting  judgment  admits  of  no  radical  change. 
Thus  to  know  at  all  is  a  development;  and  all  knowledge, 
whether  of  the  practical  or  of  the  more  strictly  scientific  sort, 
is  a  growth,  both  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

When,  however,  we  consider  the  different  acts  of  cognition 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  objects  known,  the  case  is  by 
no  means  the  same.  A  division,  or  "  diremption  "  (not  as  an 
act  of  violence  or  revolution,  indeed),  takes  place  so  early  in 
the  mental  life  that  its  origins  and  causes  are  exceedingly 
difficult  for  psychology  to  explain.  But  the  accomplishment 
of  this  process  results  in  two  kinds  of  knowledge  which  later 
seem  to  divide  between  them  all  known  objects  in  the  world  of 
our  experience;  which  distinguish  and  classify  all  forms  of 
human  science;  and  which  become  the  occasions  and  explana- 
tory causes  of  two  rival  and  perpetually  recurring  systems  of 
metaphysics.  These  two  kinds  are  the  Knowledge  of  Things 
and  the  Knowledge  of  Self. 

It  has  just  been  said  that  psychology  has  difficulty  in  explain- 
ing how  this  more  or  less  radical  division  of  knowledge  into 
two  classes,  according  to  its  objects,  originates ;  and  what  are  all 
the  subtle  and  hidden  influences  which  bring  it  about.  With 
the  newly  born  human  infant  there  is,  of  course,  no  hnowU 

78 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  79 

edge  whatever,  whether  of  itself  or  of  other  selves  or  of  things. 
It  must  "get  to  know"  by  an  activity,  at  first  impulsive  and 
involuntary  and  not  self-purposeful.  The  storm  of  new  sen- 
sory impressions,  both  painful  and  pleasurable,  which  the 
forces  of  its  natural  environment  call  forth  in  consciousness, 
must  be  reduced  to  some  kind  of  order  and  somehow  classi- 
fied and  "  objectified,"  before  the  achievement  of  knowledge, 
properly  so-called,  can  be  reached.  But  since  memory  and 
self-consciousness  are  themselves  forms  of  knowledge,  and  con- 
ditions, as  well,  of  its  higher  development,  no  first-hand  descrip- 
tion of  what  takes  place  in  the  earlier  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment ever  reaches  the  attentive  ear  of  the  inquiring  psycholo- 
gist, lie  has  forgotten  how  it  was  with  himself  as  he  learned 
to  know;  for  when  it  was  thus  with  himself,  he  had  as  yet  no 
recognitive  memory  formed,  and  was  in  fact  no  true  Self. 
And  no  babe  who  is  now  learning  to  know  can  tell  the  psy- 
chologist how  it  is  with  itself;  becaiise  to  know  one's  self,  and 
to  describe  this  Self  in  terms  of  self-consciousness,  is  to  have 
passed  quite  beyond  the  stage  in  which  the  origins  of  knowl- 
edge lie  concealed.  It  is  only  then  by  a  combination  of  data 
derived  from  observation  and  experiment,  that  psychology'  gives 
a  confessedly  doubtful  and  incomplete  picture  of  that  growth 
of  knowledge  in  and  through  which  every  human  cognitive 
consciousness  distinguishes  between  its  own  Self  and  other 
selves  and  things. 

The  difllerences  in  the  two  characteristic  processes  involved 
in  making  this  most  primary  of  all  cognitive,  objective  distinc- 
tions lead  to  a  doctrine  of  sense-perception  on  the  one  hand, 
and  on  the  other,  a  doctrine  of  self-consciousness.  And  yet,  a 
more  careful  analysis  shows  that  without  sense-perception  self- 
consciousness  could  never  be  attained ;  while  the  development 
of  the  consciousness  of  a  Self  is  indispensable  to  a  knowl- 
edge of  things.  The  two  kinds  of  knowledge  grow  as  one  at 
first;  then  as  two  branches  from  one  root;  then  as  two  trunks 
united  at  their  base ;  then  as  really  separate  and  distinct  species 


80  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

in  the  garden  of  the  universe.  Yet  always,  selves  are  known  to 
themselves  as  having  certain  essential  qualities  like  things; 
other  selves  are  known  to  every  individual  Self  through  the 
manifestation  of  changes  in  things;  and  all  things  are  known 
to  all  selves  only  as  they  manifest  more  or  less  perfectly  their 
own  self-like  characteristics.  In  this  way  we  are  compelled 
to  believe  in  the  reality  of  both,  in  the  actuality  of  their  rela- 
tions of  action  and  reaction,  and  in  the  essential  unity  of  a 
world  which  embraces  innumerable  selves  and  infinitely  nu- 
merous things. 

When  psychological  science  studies  the  differences  in  the 
material,  or  "  stuff,"  of  knowledge,  in  order  to  see  how  and 
why  the  mind  persists  in  dividing  its  objects  into  these  two 
great  classes,  its  search  for  facts  and  probable  causes  is  better 
rewarded.  Differences  in  the  "  feeling-tone "  which  is  at- 
tached to  different  kinds  of  sensory  impressions;  differences  in 
the  relations  which  these  sensory  impressions  sustain  to  our 
volitions;  differences  of  both  in  their  relations  to  changes  in 
the  bodily  organism;  differences  in  the  character  and  persist- 
ence of  the  revived  mental  images  and  in  the  thoughts  con- 
ceived, and  the  processes  inferred : — all  these  and  other  differ- 
ences are  seen  to  account  for  the  division  which  the  knower 
insists  upon  establishing  and  maintaining  between  himself  and 
other  selves  and  things.  As  the  logicians  would  say:  the  con- 
tent of  these  two  classes  of  objects  is  greatly  different.  It 
is  visual  and  tactual  sensation-complexes,  with  the  memories, 
imaginings,  thoughts  and  reasonings,  referring  to  sensation- 
experiences,  which  characterize  the  content  of  so-called  ex- 
ternal cognition.  But  the  knowledge  of  Self  has  its  content, 
not  chiefly  in  sensations  at  all ;  but  in  mental  images,  thoughts, 
feelings  or  volitions. 

Especially  important  is  the  difference  in  the  relation  toward 
what  is  called  the  "  conative  consciousness,"  which  is  sus- 
tained by  these  two  classes  of  objects.  This  difference  involves 
the  compelling  power  which  the  object  has  over  the  attention. 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   81 

and  the  relation  it  sustains  to  the  motor  organism,  with  the 
changes  in  the  feeling  of  effort,  and  in  the  pleasurable  or 
painful  tone  of  our  sensations,  which  accompany  the  control 
of  the  organism.  The  pleasure  is  mine;  the  pain  is  mine;  but 
that  which  gives  me  the  pleasure,  although  only  under  indirect 
or  remote  control  by  my  will,  or  which  causes  the  pain  in  spito 
of  my  felt  muscular  effort  to  remove  it — that  is  "  not-me." 
For  in  the  vital,  full-blooded  experience  of  reality,  there  are 
no  abstract  conceptions  of  either  Self  or  Things :  there  is  the 
"  I  "  that  wills  to  strive  for,  and  to  have,  and  to  enjoy ;  and 
there  is  the  "  that-which "  strives  with  me,  and  too  often 
hurts  or  discomforts  me,  because  it  wills  not  as  I  will. 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  self-knowledge,  it  is  the  feeling  of  the 
moving  body  which  chiefly  answers  to  the  idea  of  the  Self. 
What  is  here  and  now,  what  is  not  simply  seen  to  move  in 
sequence  upon  desire  and  volition,  but  is  felt  in  vital  contact 
with  something  else  which  the  same  desire  and  volition  cannot 
move  in  like  manner;  what  is  warm  with  emotion,  and  suffers 
definitely  localized  pleasures  or  pains; — that  is  the  present 
known  Self  of  the  child.  The  Self  of  its  seemingly  intuitive 
cognition  is  now  present  in  arms,  or  legs,  or  back;  and 
now  in  some  region  vaguely  conceived  of  as  within  the  ab- 
dominal or  thoracic  cavities.  But  even  young  children  and  the 
least  developed  savages  do  not  wholly  identify  any  one  part 
of  the  body,  or  all  the  known  parts  taken  collectively,  with 
what  they  mean  by  "  myself,"  or  "  I."  And  if,  in  the  one 
aspect  of  experience,  I  seem  obliged  to  feel  that  I  am  in  the 
arm,  the  leg,  the  trunk,  the  vaguely  localized  internal  space; 
in  another  aspect,  both  child  and  savage  learn  to  know  the  leg, 
or  arm,  or  trunk,  or  heart,  as  not  Me  but  rather  mine.  Instead 
of  the  child  and  the  savage  being  incapable  of  conceiving  of  a 
Self  as  a  soul  separable  from  the  visible  and  tangible  parts 
of  the  body;  both  savage  and  child  perform  this  distinguish- 
ing act  of  imagination  with  too  great  freedom  from  the  bonds 
of  scientific  accuracy  and  of  respect  for  the  testimony  of  a  care- 


82  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

fully  analyzed  experience.  The  savage  imagines  himself  a 
spirit  which  can  wander  far  afield  from  his  physical  organism, 
and  which  can  easily  survive  its  dissolution;  while  the  child 
developes  such  a  wealth  of  conscious  self-hood,  that  it  can  endow 
with  its  own  feelings,  its  toys,*  its  playmates,  and  all  the 
natural  objects  of  its  enlarging  environment.  In  the  his- 
tory of  the  intellectual  development  of  the  race,  this  spiritual- 
izing of  things,  by  imparting  to  them  a  kind  of  self-hood 
which  is  not  necessarily  embodied  in  an  organism  like  our  own, 
but  which  is  thought  of  as  separable  from  any  particular  form 
of  material  expression,  has  been  an  ever-persistent  and  power- 
ful factor.  Science  chastens,  refines,  and  extends,  the  cogni- 
tive activities  in  which  this  anthropomorphizing  imagination 
bears  so  prominent  a  part;  it  does  not,  and  it  cannot,  free 
itself  from  essentially  the  same  kind  of  anthromorphism.  By 
knowledge  the  knower  distinguishes  himself  from  that  which 
he  knows;  and  yet  that  which  he  knows  is  known  to  him  only 
in  terms  of  correspondence  to  the  knowing  Self.  Not-me,  and 
yet  somehow  liTce-me,  is  the  character  with  which  knowledge 
stamps  all  its  objects,  whether  selves  or  things. 

Just  here,  however,  two  very  important  distinctions  emerge. 
These  are,  first,  a  distinction  in  the  amounts  of  intuition,  the 
degrees  of  immediacy,  in  the  two  kinds  of  knowledge;  and, 
second,  a  distinction  in  the  amount  and  certainty  of  the 
knowledge  gained  as  to  the  real  character  of  the  object  known. 
In  a  word,  the  knowledge  of  Self  is,  of  all  kinds  of  knowledge, 
most  intuitive,  immediate,  and  most  characterized  by  the  con- 
viction of  certainty;  of  all  objects,  the  Self  rather  than  other 
selves  or  things,  is  most  fully  known  as  it  really  is. 

The  first  of  these  distinctions  is  illustrated  and  emphasized 
by  all  the  experience  of  self-consciousness.  As  has  already 
been  said,  this  kind  of  cognitive  activity  is  not  a  ready-made 
gift  from  nature's  hand,  but  an  achievement  in  the  form  of  a 
development.  In  spite  of  the  mystery,  however,  which  shrouds 
its   origins  and  earlier  growth,  its   important  and  distinctive 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   83 

characteristics  are  manifest  beyond  doubt.  When  /  am  in 
pain,  or  iti  a  state  of  pleasurable  excitement;  when  I  am 
feeling  any  form  of  passion,  affection,  or  sentiment;  when  / 
am  indulging  or  pursuing  any  train  of  associated  ideas  or  logic- 
ally connected  thoughts;  then  simply  to  say,  "pain  is,"  "pas- 
sion is,"  "  ideas  or  thoughts  are,"  does  not  by  any  means 
accurately  describe  the  finished  experience.  I  know  that  I  am 
pained,  am  angry,  loving,  aspiring,  am  imagining  or  thinking, 
as  the  case  may  be.  And  within  certain  limits  I  can  examine 
these  conscious  conditions,  and  thus  learn  more  accurately 
what  they  are,  as  states  or  activities  attributed  to  myself.  To 
be  sure,  in  the  very  effort  at  reflection  I  to  some  extent,  and 
often  almost  completely,  modify  the  conscious  conditions  which 
I  examine;  and  if  we  refer  to  the  relatively  fleeting  character, 
in  time,  of  all  our  experiences  with  ourselves,  we  may  say 
that,  to  speak  with  mathematical  accuracy,  it  is  the  just  past 
condition  of  the  Self  which  is  imperfectly  remembered  rather 
than  the  now  present  condition  of  the  Self  which  is  envisaged 
and  intuitively  known.  But  experience,  whether  with  our- 
selves or  with  outside  things,  is  not  given  in  those  infinitesimals 
of  time  and  space  with  which  calculus  can  deal,  but  of  which 
human  souls  know  nothing  either  by  sense-perception  or  by 
self-consciousness.  And  all  such  argument,  or  conclusion  from 
such  argument,  cannot  diminish  the  confidence  in  its  imme- 
diacy and  certainty  which  the  experience  called  self-conscious- 
ness imparts  and  justifies.  That  I  may  know,  and  at  times 
do  most  fully  and  assuredly  know,  myself  as  being  here-and- 
now  in  such  and  such  a  state,  is  a  proposition  on  the  validity 
of  which  not  only  all  knowledge  of  Self  is  based,  but  also  all 
knowledge  of  every  sort  whatever.  Indeed,  without  admitting 
the  significance  and  the  validity  of  self-consciousness,  we  can 
form  no  conception  whatever  of  what  it  is  to  know.  This 
is  a  truth  upon  which  philosophy  can  scarcely  insist  too  often. 
A  knower,  who  is  incapable  of  self-consciousness,  is  as  much 
a  contradiction  in  terms  as  "  wooden  iron  "  is. 


84  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

The  principal  characteristics  of  self-conscious  knowledge  are 
about  as  plain  as  is  the  fact  of  its  experience.  They  are  of  the 
nature  of  what  we  may  call  an  "  envisagement."  They  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  two  words,  immediacy  and  indubitableness. 
When  7  know  me,  as  being  so  or  so  affected  or  as  being  active 
in  such  or  such  a  way,  there  is  nothing,  so  to  say,  between 
the  "  I  "  who  knows  the  "  me  "  and  the  "  me  "  who  is  known 
by  the  "  I " ;  and  when  analyzed  so  as  to  discover  without 
exaggeration  the  value  of  the  experience,  doubt  cannot  attach 
itself  successfully  to  the  validity  of  the  experience.  To  tell 
me  that  I  am  not  in  pain,  when  I  know  that  I  am,  is  to  mock 
me;  although  the  end  of  the  mockery  may  induce  me  by  the 
withdrawal  of  attention,  or  use  of  other  expedient,  to  modify 
the  painful  state. 

From  this  distinction  in  the  way  of  knowing,  and  as  chiefly 
dependent  upon  it,  there  follows  a  distinction  in  the  fullness 
with  which  the  real  nature  of  the  object  is  known.  In  self- 
consciousness,  knower  and  object  known  are  one  and  the  same 
Boul.  In  this  act  of  cognition,  the  full  nature  of  the  object  at 
the  moment  of  cognition  is  made  known  to  the  subject.  A 
pained,  or  passionate,  or  thoughtful  "  me  "  is  the  really  exist- 
ent and  indubitably  known  object  of  the  self-conscious  "  I." 
As  the  experience  of  the  Self  with  itself,  and  with  other  selves 
and  things,  increases  in  both  extent  and  depth;  as  more  and 
more  objects  are  known  by  the  Self,  and  as  all  known  objects 
are  more  thoroughly  and  accurately  known;  the  same  kind  of 
reflection  makes  us  aware  of  a  larger  outfit  of  the  powers 
of  self-hood  and  of  a  greater  complication  in  their  exercise, 
and  a  greater  wealth  in  their  achievements.  We  know  our- 
selves as  experiencing  forms  of  affection  and  sentiment  of 
which  the  child  is  incapable.  We  know  ourselves  as  having 
ambitions  and  aspirations  that  rise  above  and  reach  beyond 
the  earlier  and  more  primitive  animal  wants  and  desires  of 
infancy  and  youth.  We  know  ourselves  as  imagining  things 
and  events  in  times   and  spaces,   of  which   the  undeveloped 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   85 

mind  could  never  dream  or  apprehend  the  meaning  of  as  they 
are  imaginatively  depicted  by  others.  We  know  ourselves 
as  gaining  practical  knowledge  or  making  scientific  attain- 
ments by  observations,  experiments,  and  trains  of  thinking, 
quite  superior  to  anything  possible  in  the  earlier  years  of 
mental  development.  We  know  ourselves  as  having  concep- 
tions and  sentiments  and  ideals  of  art,  duty,  and  religion,  of 
which  only  the  faintest  traces,  or  no  traces  whatever,  can  be 
found  in  the  memories  of  one  or  more  decades  ago.  Yet  all 
these  experiences  of  suffering  and  doing,  of  acting  and  being 
acted  upon,  are  known  only  as  they  are  attributed  to  the  same 
Self  as  the  subject  of  them  all.  And  if  I  am  asked  what  now, 
with  the  years  of  infinitely  richer  experience,  I  know  myself 
to  be,  I  must  add  greatly  to  the  description  of  my  self-known 
character.  But  everything  I  add,  will  belong  as  truly  as 
ever  to  what  I  indubitably  know  myself  really  to  be.  For 
these  experiences  of  suffering  and  action,  however  highly  de- 
veloped and  complexly  organized,  are  all  of  myself,  with  my- 
self. They  make  up,  together  with  the  inferences  which  may 
be  based  upon  them,  the  conception  of  what  I  really  am. 
Whether  the  inferences  are  justifiable,  or  not,  may  indeed  be 
questioned;  but  that  I  really  am  the  subject  of  these  experi- 
ences, and  that  I  really  am  what  they,  as  a  basis,  show  me  to 
myself  to  be,  cannot  be  called  in  question.  Since  these  ex- 
periences have  not  yet  reached  a  fixed  limit,  and  especially 
since  imagination  and  intellect  do  not  find  themselves  exhausted 
in  their  inferences  from  these  acts  of  self-knowledge,  there  is 
warrant  for  believing  that  the  personality  is  really  something 
more,  perhaps  much  more,  than  it  now  knows  itself  to  be. 
The  development  of  this  truth  about  the  connection  between 
knowledge  and  reality  must  be  left  to  the  metaphysics  of  mind. 
The  fact  of  this  truth  is  essential  to  note  in  forming  a  correct 
and  tenable  theory  of  knowledge. 

With  the  knowledge  of  other  selves  and  of  things,  the  ease 
is  not  the  same.  Things  are  known  by  sense-perception  and 


86  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

not  by  seif-consciousness.  The  distinction,  however,  does  not 
amount  to  a  complete  separation  in  the  character  of  the  two 
kinds  of  knowledge,  or  in  the  two  kinds  of  objects  that  are 
known.  There  is  a  certain  immediacy  and  sureness  of  con- 
viction, about  the  knowledge  which  comes  through  the  senses. 
A  completed  act  of  sense-perception,  like  self-consciousness, 
leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  real  existence  of  the  object  known. 
Indeed,  for  the  earlier  developments  of  knowledge  what  we 
sense  is  the  very  type  of  what  we  most  immediately  and  in- 
dubitably know.  Psychological  analysis  shows,  indeed,  that 
this  kind  of  knowledge  is  also  a  development;  that  things  do 
not  exist  ready-made,  for  the  passive  mind  to  be  impressed 
with;  that  knowing  things  is  no  mere  copying-off  process. 
And  the  physico-chemical  sciences  are  revealing — during  the 
past  two  decades  in  ways  of  wonder  never  even  dreamed  of 
before — how  unlike  anything  which  our  senses  can  immedi- 
ately envisage  is  the  infinitely  complicated  and  hidden  consti- 
tution of  things.  Yet  all  this  science  is  based  upon  the  same 
confidence  in  the  immediacy  and  indubitable  character  of  the 
experience  of  sense-perception,  when  correctly  analyzed  and 
properly  understood.  From  that  undiscoverable  moment, 
when  the  baby  perceives  any  object  which,  however  dimly  and 
imperfectly,  it  sets  outside  of  its  own  consciousness;  when  it 
locates  any  painful  or  pleasurable  feeling  in  some  visible  or 
tangible  part  of  its  own  organism;  especially  when  it  bumps 
against,  or  pushes  against,  or  enters  into  a  muscular  contest 
with  its  own  object  of  sense;  from  that  very  moment  there 
is  the  beginning  of  the  knowledge  of  a  world  that  is  not-me. 
This  experience  it  is  which  develops  into  a  science  of  a  world 
of  things.  And  under  the  conditions  which  are  fulfilled  in 
every  primitive  but  completed  act  of  sense-perception,  there  is 
the  irresistible  feeling  of  immediacy,  and  of  confidence  in  the 
reality  of  the  object.  The  psychological  interpretation  of  this 
experience  has  been  briefly  referred  to  in  an  earlier  chapter. 
We  have  there  found  that  it  is,  in  its  chief  characteristic. 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   87 

best  described  as  tbe  feeling  of  a  will  opposed,  of  a  will  ex- 
periencing a  will  w-hich  does  not  will  as  does  the  will  of  the 
knower. 

The  same  immediacy  cannot,  however,  be  claimed  for  the 
development  of  this  knowledge  of  things  by  sense-perception 
and  of  the  knowledge  of  Self  by  self-consciousness.  That 
there  is  something  not-myself  I  indubitably  and  immediately 
know  in  the  experience  of  sense-perception.  What  are  the 
characteristics,  the  qualities,  and  the  habitual  modes  of  be- 
havior of  this  something  must  be  learned  by  a  system  of  in- 
ferences. That  I  am  really  suffering  pain  when  the  coal  burns 
me,  I  know;  but  what  the  coal  is  really  doing  when  it  pains 
me,  I  do  not  know  except  as  physical  science  can  inform  me. 
That  I  see  the  glowing  coal  as  extended  in  space,  I  surely 
know,  and  in  the  act  of  seeing  I  know  what  sight  as  an  experi- 
ence really  is;  but  what  it  is  to  be  in  space,  or  how  it  is  that 
that  thing  can  cause  me  to  see  it  as  extended  in  just  that  space, 
I  do  not  know  with  the  same  immediacy  and  certainty. 

When,  then,  a  more  complete  and  ti-uly  inward  answer 
to  the  question.  What  are  things  really?  is  required,  there  is 
no  other  resort  than  to  analogy.  We  see  them  moving,  chang- 
ing their  own  shapes  and  relations  to  one  another  in  space. 
While  maintaining  certain  more  or  less  relatively  permanent 
characteristics,  the  individual  things  are  ever  altering  the 
details  in  the  manifestation  which  they  make  to  our  senses. 
These  more  permanent  or  more  mutable  forms  of  manifestation 
we  know  in  terms  of  our  own  experience.  But  what  are  they 
really  that  so  manifest  themselves  to  us?  That  they  are  not 
really  altogether  what  they  seem,  science  is  always  more 
abundantly  convincing  us.  But  science  can  only  interpret 
them,  since  science  is  human,  in  terms  of  human  experience. 
It  can  only  render  more  subtle  and  complicated  the  argument 
from  analogy.  For  all  our  terms  of  experience  are  known, 
as  to  what  they  really  are  as  experiences,  only  in  and  through 
self-consciousness.     And  here  the  human   mind   falls   into   a 


88  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

condition  of  being  puzzled  and  in  doubt,  from  which  the  posi- 
tive sciences  have  as  yet  done  only  a  little  to  extricate  it. 
Many  things,  which  certainly  are  not  ourselves,  are  known  to 
us  as  other  selves.  This  is  matter  of  a  system  of  inferences 
from  signs,  which  is  so  complete  and  convincing  as  to  solve  all 
doubts.  These  thing-like  beings,  are  really  selves  like  ourselves 
— the  human  beings  of  our  acquaintance,  either  personal,  or 
through  description,  or  in  history.  Then  there  are  other  not 
quite  so  self-like  things :  these  are  the  animals  of  one  species 
or  another.  The  more  self-like  they  are,  the  better  we  know 
them  as  they  really  are.  The  owner  knows  his  faithful  dog  or 
horse,  in  terms  of  his  own  sensation,  feeling,  and  thinking. 
But  in  what  terms  shall  the  human  mind  conceive  how  a 
clam,  or  a  jelly-fish,  or  an  amoeba,  senses,  feels,  and  thinks,  in 
its  varying  relations  to  other  things?  And  then  there  are  the 
plants :  how  soulful  and  intelligent  is  the  behavior  of  some  of 
them,  and  how  do  they  seem  consciously  to  rejoice  in  their  own 
delicate  beauty,  or  majestic  strength !  But  are  they  really  like 
us  in  these  regards — which  are  the  only  regards  under  which 
we  can  present  to  ourselves  the  reality  of  their  inward  life? 
And  shall  we  stop  our  system  of  analogical  inferences  with 
them?  Is  not  modern  science  driving  into  the  abyss  of  an  ab- 
surd and  impossible  conception,  all  thought  of  "  dead  "  matter, 
or  of  purposeless  and  inactive  things?  Why,  then,  should  man 
not  interpret  the  Universe  as  a  totality,  in  terms  of  reality  as 
experienced  by  himself;  and  that  is  to  say,  in  terms  of  an  ex- 
perience of  the  life  of  a  Self? 

Especially  important  and  even  decisive,  therefore,  for  a  valid 
theory  of  knowledge  is  this  truth :  The  reality  of  the  subject 
and  the  reality  of  the  object,  and  also  the  actuality  of  that 
relation  between  subject  and  object  which  is  essential  to  cogni' 
Hon,  are  an  indubitable  experience  in  every  act,  both  of  sense- 
perception  and  of  self-consciousness.  The  reality  is  not  a 
matter  of  mere  thinking,  or  of  mere  believing,  or  of  merely 
mental  representation.    To  use,  while  rejecting  as  appropriate, 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   89 

the  misleading  Kantian  phrase :  It  is  no  "  phenomenal  reality  " 
which  the  knower  knows  himself  to  be  and  to  cognize  in  his 
object.  The  relation  established  by  knowledge  is  not  an  ab- 
straction or  an  image  of  that  which  may,  or  may  not  be, 
actual  fact.  No  merely  grammatical  or  merely  logical  descrip- 
tion covers  completely  any  experience  of  knowledge,  whether 
its  object  be  the  Self  or  some  Thing. 

Several  kinds  of  knowledge  which  are  based  upon  other 
principles  of  division  than  that  which  chiefly  distinguishes  the 
character  of  the  object  known,  require  a  brief  notice.  But 
they  are  all  of  secondary  importance;  they  do  not  change  the 
essential  nature  of  the  cognitive  process.  Thus  Schopenhauer 
soundly  berates  Kant  (and,  indeed,  not  without  a  show  of 
reasons)  for  exalting  conceptions  so  far  above  perceptual 
knowledge.  He  then  himself  reverses  the  position  of  concep- 
tion and  intuition  so  completely  as  to  deprive  the  intellect  of 
all  claim  to  arrive  at  truth  of  reality.  By  a  kind  of  non- 
sensuous  intuition,  such  as  Kant  supposed  only  God  himself 
could  possess,  Schopenhauer  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  the 
essence  of  Thing -in-itself  is  "  Will."  But  "  Thing-in-itself " 
is  no-thing,  is  nothing  but  an  abstraction  so  "  pure "  that  it 
leaves  no  mist  of  imagination  to  clothe  itself  withal;  just  as 
unconscious  or  subconscious,  or  non-self-conscious  mind  is  no 
cognitive  mind  whatever;  for  consciousness,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  essential  to  knowledge — in  each  of  the  several  forms  in 
which  human  beings  can  have  knowledge,  or  even  conceive  of 
what  it  is  to  have  knowledge.  In  a  word,  the  very  distinction 
between  perceptual  and  conceptual  knowledge  is  one  of  de- 
grees only;  and  knowledge  itself  is  impossible  without  both 
insight  and  inference.  Man  must  both  believe  and  think  in 
order  to  know  at  all ;  the  most  abstract  conceptions  rest  upon 
a  basis  of  perceptions;  the  arguments  by  which  the  purest 
mathematics  reaches  the  conclusions  of  its  most  abstruse  and 
imaginary  problems  rise  and  fall  upon  a  scaffolding  of  con- 
crete sensuous  experiences.     In  this  respect  the  contention  of 


90  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Schopenhauer  is  undoubtedly  true :  "  The  given  material  of 
every  philosophy  is  accordingly  nothing  else  than  the  empirical 
consciousness,  which  divides  itself  into  the  consciousness  of 
one's  own  self  and  the  consciousness  of  other  things." 

As  to  Degrees  of  Knowledge  the  principle  of  continuity 
applies  in  a  most  interesting  and  instructive  way.  It  is  cus- 
tomary^  indeed,  to  speak  of  knowing  as  though  it  were  sharply 
distinguished  from  believing,  conjecturing,  imagining,  opin- 
ing, or  even  from  theorizing  and  arguing  with  one's  self  about 
the  actuality  of  alleged  facts  or  the  truth  of  avowed  princi- 
ples. And  at  the  extremes  there  is  no  dit!iculty,  and  no  lack 
of  confidence,  in  making  such  distinctions.  But  there  is,  in 
fact,  only  one  sort  of  knowledge  that  can  be  called  "  absolute  "; 
and  there  is  no  human  knowledge  that,  by  any  stretch  of 
courtesy  or  admiration  for  the  wonderful  capacity  of  man,  can 
be  called  "  perfect "  knowledge.  To  ask  in  a  sceptical,  or 
even  fairly  critical  spirit,  the  question  "Are  you  absolutely 
sure  ?  "  is  to  sound  the  call  to  a  long  chase  and  a  tedious  hunt, 
if  indeed  any  game  at  all  is  to  reward  the  search  by  the  close 
of  the  day. 

There  is  one  act  of  cognition,  however,  which,  although  it 
is,  like  all  cognition,  the  result  of  a  development  that  requires 
for  its  achievement  all  the  processes  which  psychological 
science  finds  to  belong  of  necessity  to  the  very  nature  of  cog- 
nition, merits  the  title  "  absolute "  in  the  strictest  possible 
meaning  of  the  word.  This  is  the  consciousness  of  the  here- 
and-now  being  of  the  Self;  but  it  is  not  the  equivalent  of 
absolute  self-knowledge.  That  I  was  then-and-there,  can  be 
known  only  by  memory;  and  memory  is  not  infallil)le.  It 
requires  much  difficult  analysis  and  subtle  argument  to  ex- 
pound the  doctrine  of  personal  identity.  That  I  have  been 
between  the  then-and-there  of  memory  and  the  here-and-now 
of  self-consciousness,  can  be  known  only  by  inference.  And 
inference  as  to  the  continuance  of  the  same  existences  through 
the  passage  of  time  is  always  subject  to  doubt;  while  to  tell  in 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE    91 

what  sense  I  am  really  the  same,  notwithstanding  the  un- 
doubted fact  that  in  every  important  particular  I  have  greatly 
changed,  taxes  all  the  resources  of  the  metaphysics  of  mind. 
The  highest  degree  of  human  cognitive  experience,  the  type 
under  which  man  must  conceive  of  absolute  knowledge,  is 
given  in  the  sentence :  "  I  am  here-and-now  " — suffering  pain 
or  experiencing  pleasure,  mainly  given  up  to  an  act  of  sense- 
perception,  or  indulging  in  imaginings,  or  active  in  thought. 
Of  this  concrete,  but  complex,  fact  of  present  experience,  I 
cannot  doubt.     To  doubt  is  but  to  affirm  it  in  another  form. 

It  was  this  experience  of  self-consciousness  with  its  essential 
implicates,  which  Descartes  intended  to  enunciate  as  the  fun- 
damental principle  of  his  epistemology  in  the  form  of  the 
celebrated  maxim :  Cogito,  ergo  sum.  What  criticism  finds  in 
this  principle  to  serve  as  a  cure  for  scepticism,  and  what 
scepticism  may  still  demand  of  criticism  with  regard  to  the 
Cartesian  and  other  implications  of  this  principle,  will 
occupy  our  attention  elsewhere.  It  is  enough  at  present  to 
have  pointed  out  the  general  characteristics  of  that  experience 
in  which  a  conception  of  the  highest,  most  truly  absolute  and 
indubitable  knowledge,  is  realized  by  man.  It  is  the  experience 
of  a  soul  with  itself  as  its  own  object  of  l-nowlcdge.  Nor  need 
we  repeat  again  how  powerless  all  sceptical  analysis  of  self- 
consciousness  is  in  its  effort  to  destroy  or  impair  the  validity 
of  this  act  of  self-knowledge.  What  I  know  myself  actually 
to  be  to  myself,  that  I  know  absolutely. 

In  saying  this,  however,  the  word  "  absolute "  is  used  to 
stamp  this  knowledge  gained  by  self-consciousness  with  the 
one  mark  of  indubitable  certainty.  Certain,  such  knowledge 
certainly  is;  not  subject  of  doubt,  such  an  act  of  cognition 
doubtless  is.  But  this  absolute  knowledge  is  as  meagre,  un- 
stable, and  fleeting — or  "  relative  " — as  it  is  absolute.  The 
very  act  of  self-consciousness  in  which  it  is  achieved  is,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  psychological  science  as  well  as  from  that 
of  the  life-history  of  a  soul,  just  a  bare  moment  in  existence 


92  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  then  it  fades  away  never  to  return.  How  can  it,  which 
is  itself  so  evanescent  and  dream-like,  establish  the  standing 
in  reality  of  its  own  self,  not  to  say,  the  reality  of  other  things. 
For  at  this  point,  we  might  confess  that  the  term  proposed  by 
psychologists  who  object  to  talking  about  souls  as  though  they 
were  really  existent  agencies,  or  free  and  relatively  independent 
wills, — namely,  "  a  stream  of  consciousness," — is  a  complete 
misnomer.  Indeed,  a  more  unfortunate  and  misleading  figure 
of  speech  could  scarcely  be  employed.  There  can  be  no  real 
"  stream "  of  a  physical  sort,  without  an  established  and  per- 
manent continuity  to  the  different  sections  or  moments  of  the 
stream.  If  each  preceding  thinnest  section  of  the  stream  is 
taken  up  before  the  next  is  laid  down,  then  the  process  of  lay- 
ing down  the  sections  may  go  on  forever,  but  there  will  be  no 
stream.  In  the  soul's  life,  however,  there  appears  now  an  act 
chiefly  of  self-consciousness  and  then  an  act  chiefly  of  sense- 
perception;  now  an  experience  of  pleasure  and  then  an  experi- 
ence of  pain;  now  a  state  of  consciousness  characterized  mainly 
by  imagination,  and  then  one  of  passion  or  of  serious  thought. 
But  these  all  are  a  series  of  states;  and  in  the  series  there  is 
no  one  of  many  members  of  the  series  which  remains  in  place 
so  as  to  connect  with  its  neighbor  and  thus  maintain  the  actu- 
ality of  a  continuous  stream.  Neither  does  the  Ego  sit  sta- 
tionary upon  the  bank,  as  it  were,  and  watch  the  stream  go  by; 
for,  as  we  have  said,  there  is  no  stream  going  by,  and,  if  there 
were,  the  watcher  could  not  separate  himself  from  the  stream. 
Still  further,  this  achievement  of  absolute  knowledge,  which 
is  so  temporary  and  so  limited  in  content,  must  be  learned, 
so  to  say;  and  it  is  a  kind  of  learning,  in  the  attainment  and 
practice  of  which,  for  the  bare  sake  of  establishing  a  theory 
of  knowledge,  very  few  men — and  fortunately ! — have  any 
particular  interest.  If,  then,  one  refuses  to  accept  as  knowl- 
edge all  cognitions  which  are  not  absolute,  one  may  as  well 
surrender  at  once  the  hope  of  knowing  anything  whatever. 
For  all  the  knowledge  which  men  have,  and  use,  and  develope. 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   93 

— whether  it  is  called  practical  or  scientific,  or  philosophical, 
— is  only  relative  with  regard  to  the  degree  of  certainty  which 
can  be  attached  to  it.  There  is  no  escape,  then,  from  the  con- 
clusion that  in  a  valid  meaning  of  the  words,  all  human  knowl- 
edge is  relative: — namely,  in  self-consciousness  we  have  given 
the  absolute  knowledge  that  we  are,  and  what  we  are,  but  only 
just  then  and  there;  while  in  sense-perception  we  have  given 
the  conviction  that  something  not  ourselves  is  here  and  now, 
but  what  it  is,  we  can  never  absolutely  know. 

The  growth  of  all  knowledge  comes  through  inferences 
which  land  us,  either  by  what  seems  a  kind  of  unavoidable 
leap,  or  else  by  way  of  slower  and  often  difficult  and  tedious 
processes  of  thinking,  at  the  standing  place  of  a  system  of 
so-called  judgments.  These  judgments  affirm  or  deny  qual- 
ities and  relations  of  things  and  selves;  and  they  constitute  for 
the  individual  knower  a  more  or  less  orderly,  but  always  con- 
siderably tangled  and  confused,  net-work  of  knowledge  ahout 
things  and  selves.  But,  again,  unless  we  say  that  to  "  know 
about "  is  really  to  know,  we  must  confine  the  realm  of  knowl- 
edge so  strictly  as  to  exclude  from  it  all  practical,  scientific, 
or  philosophical  value,  as  real  truth.  It  would  seem,  then, 
that  higher  and  lower  degrees  of  probability,  as  judged  by 
the  reasons  which  commend  and  certify  our  acts  of  knowl- 
edge, and  somewhat  corresponding  degrees  of  scepticism  or 
uncertainty,  must  characterize  all  the  achievements  of  man's 
cognitive  faculties.  For  such  is  human  knowledge;  and  he 
who  will  have  none  of  it,  because  it  is  all  qualified  with  the 
possibility  of  error,  and  stamped  with  the  certainty  of  imper- 
fection, must  somehow  make  of  himself  either  much  more  or 
much  less  than  a  man. 

The  different  processes  involved  in  these  inferences,  the 
methods  of  testing  the  resulting  judgments,  the  assignments 
of  amount  of  truth  or  error  that  is  in  them, — and,  in  a  word, 
the  descriptive  history  of  how  knowledge  grows,  in  the  individ- 
ual and  in  the  race;  all  this  belongs  to  psychology  and  to 


94  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

logic  to  investigate  and  to  expound.  Philosophy,  in  the  branch 
of  it  called  epistemology,  however,  is  chiefly  concerned  with 
the  limits  and  the  guaranty  of  knowledge.  But  the  applica- 
tion of  the  different  standards  employed  to  fix  these  limits, 
and  to  establish  this  guaranty,  result  in  calling  our  attention 
once  more  to  the  varying  degrees  of  knowledge  as  seen  from 
somewhat  different  points  of  view.  Thus,  for  example,  there 
is  so-called  "  practical "  knowledge.  The  man  who  is  lacking 
in  this  is  said  not  to  have  common-sense.  He  does  not  know 
enough  about  things  and  about  other  selves  to  adjust  himself 
properly  to  them,  in  what  must  be  for  them  and  for  him,  a 
common  environment.  A  great  lack  of  such  knowledge,  due 
to  deficiency  of  native  or  developed  knowing  faculty,  is  idiocy. 
If,  however,  the  failure  in  respect  of  such  knowledge  is  rather 
due  to  lack  of  interest  in,  or  of  practice  upon,  this  more  com- 
mon class  of  objects,  the  man  is  said  to  be  awkward,  odd,  un- 
practical. Scientific  knowledge,  which  aims  to  know  about 
things  and  selves  their  more  hidden  and  subtile,  but  often 
most  essential,  qualities  and  relations,  assumes  to  itself  the 
title  to  a  higher  degree  of  value.  Sometimes  its  devotees 
claim  to  scorn  the  practical,  and  to  pursue  knowledge  "  for 
its  own  sake,"  and  quite  irrespective  of  the  application  to 
life  of  the  truths  which  science  discovers.  But  the  concep- 
tion of  knowledge  for  its  own  ^sake  is  a  figment,  a  myth ;  all 
human  knowledge  is  of  man,  and  for  man's  sake.  Yet  the 
satisfactions  which  come  from  knowing  are  among  the  choicest 
achievements  of  the  human  soul.  This  same  statement  ap- 
plies to  so-called  philosophical  truth,  whether  we  consider 
the  latter  to  be  superior  or  inferior  in  the  degree  of  its  as- 
surance, or  of  its  worth  and  dignity,  to  scientific  truth.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  value,  as  fixed  by  the  loftiest  sentiments 
and  practical  demands  of  the  human  soul,  the  truths  of  morals, 
art,  and  religion  are  supreme.  From  the  point  of  view  taken 
by  him  who  insists  upon  clear  perception  of  fact,  experi- 
mental testing  which  can  be  carried  on  under  strict  control, 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   95 

and  logical  procedure  leading  to  incontestable  conclusions  about 
comprehensible  objects,  these  truths  al)out  human  ideals  seem 
to  stand  lo^vest  in  the  scale  of  knowledge.  Indeed,  many- 
would  deny  that  they  can  ever  he  established  so  as  to  claim 
title  to  admittance  within  the  properly  guarded  realm  of 
human  knowledge.  They  must,  the  rather,  it  is  then  asserted, 
be  relegated  to  the  realm  of  beliefs,  or  opinions,  or  conjec- 
tures, dependent  upon  the  individual's  attitude  of  faith.  Here, 
once  more,  attention  is  called  back  to  the  psychological  facts: 
Belief,  opinion,  conjecture,  activities  and  products  of  imagina- 
tion, influences  from  sentiment  and  prejudice,  irrational  tend- 
encies to  dogmatism  or  equall}^  irrational  tendencies  to  scep- 
ticism and  agnosticism,  mix  with  and  control  every  act  in 
every   kind  of  human   cognition. 

There  is  one  most  important  truth  with  which  for  the 
present  we  leave  the  discussion  of  this  subject :  Knowledge 
cannot  he  considered  apart  from  life.  Whatever  kind  of 
value  knowledge  has,  and  whatever  degree  is  attainable  in 
any  particular  kind  of  value,  knowledge  is  also  always  a  means 
to  an  end  that  lies  above  itself.  That  end  is  the  life  of  a  self- 
conscious  person.  But  this  life  must  be  understood  and  in- 
terpreted in  no  niggardly  fashion.  Its  aims,  and  satisfactions, 
and  final  purposes,  are  not  to  be  found  wholly  in  intelligent 
commerce  with  things;  they  are  even  more  perfectly  realized 
in  an  intelligent  grasp  upon,  and  in  a  rational  appreciation 
and  serious  pursuit  of,  the  invisible  and  non-sensuous  ideals 
of  morals,  art,  and  religion. 

No  subject  in  philosophy  has  been  productive  of  more  un- 
reasonable dogmatism  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  equally  unrea- 
sonable agnosticism  on  the  other,  than  the  discussion  of  the 
Limits  of  Knowledge.  If  in  affirming  these  limits  it  is  meant 
virtually  to  say  that  man  has  no  other  way  of  knowing  than 
the  human  way,  and  that  what  lies  beyond  this  human  way 
must  be  unknown;  then  the  statement  is  as  undeniable  as  it 
is  worthless.     To   know  is  to  relate:  therefore,  we  are  told, 


96  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

all  knowledge  is  essentially  relative  and  limited.  But  one  may- 
ask  :  What  else  would  you  have ;  or  even  conceive  of  as  some- 
thing better,  if  only  it  could  be  attained?  Certainly,  knowl- 
edge implies  a  knower,  and  an  object  known,  and  a  relation 
established  between  them.  The  researches  of  psychology,  logic, 
and  epistemology  are  designed  to  tell  us  precisely  what  an 
experience  of  knowledge  really  is.  Which  of  the  three  factors 
would  the  agnostic  dispense  with : — the  knower,  tlie  object, 
or  the  relation  in  which  the  essence  of  the  cognitive  experience 
consists?  To  convert  the  relativity  of  all  knowledge  into  an 
axiom,  in  order  to  create  suspicion,  or  to  breed  ignorance,  is 
exactly  to  reverse  the  conclusion  at  which  an  analysis  of  the 
nature  of  knowledge  compels  us  to  arrive. 

That  man's  knowledge  is  limited,  in  respect  to  (1)  the 
range  of  its  accuracy  and  refinement,  (2)  the  number  of  the 
objects  which  can  be  included  in  a  single  grasp  of  conscious- 
ness, and  (3)  the  speed  and  trustworthiness  of  its  inferences 
and  conclusions,  is  undoubtedly  true.  In  all  these  respects, 
however,  we  must  at  once  supplement  and  correct  words  of  dis- 
couragement by  words  of  cheer  and  hope.  There  is  no  little 
evidence  to  show,  not  only  that  all  knowledge  for  the  indi- 
vidual and  for  the  race  is  a  matter  of  growth,  but  even  that 
the  extent  to  which  the  limits  of  human  knowledge  may  be 
pushed  out  into  the  boundless  ocean  of  the  unknown,  by  the 
development  of  human  cognitive  faculty  and  by  the  extension 
and  refinement  of  scientific  methods,  cannot  itself  confidently 
be  limited  at  the  present  time.  In  liis  celebrated  chapter  "On 
the  Ground  of  the  Distinction  of  Objects  in  general  into  Phe- 
nomena and  Noumena,"  Kant  compares  the  whole  domain  of 
human  knowledge  to  an  island  "  enclosed  by  nature  itself 
within  limits  that  can  never  be  changed."  For  around  this 
island  there  is  "  a  wide  and  stormy  ocean,"  full  of  fog-banks 
and  of  ice:  the  ocean  is  "the  home  of  illusion,"  but  the  island 
is  "  the  country  of  truth."  But  in  the  Kantian  theory,  even 
the  truth  of  this  country  is  not  truth,  as  either  the  plain  man, 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   07 

the  man  of  science,  or  the  philosopher,  nndcrstands  truth. 
It  is  only  the  truth  which  phenomena  seem  to  have,  when  thoy 
are  made  "  objective "  by  man's  intellect  in  forms  imparted 
to  them  wholly  by  the  activities  of  the  intellect  itself.  The 
island  itself  then  is  "  the  home  of  illusion  " ;  and  its  limits 
are  set  by  a  fog-bound  ocean,  the  very  nature  of  which  we 
cannot  know,  or  trust  the  intellect  correctly  to  dream  about. 
Now  all  this,  we  submit,  reverses  the  terms  on  which  we 
have  our  actual  experience  of  knowledge.  The  island  is  in- 
deed "the  country  of  truth";  but  it  is  truly  this  because  it 
is  the  domain  within  which  we  have  commerce  by  knowledge, 
with  reality.  And  the  domain  of  the  island  is  not  limited  by 
a  wholly  invisible  and  stormy  ocean,  "the  home  of  illusion." 
Even  the  ocean  itself  is  part  of  the  same  nature  which  we  are 
constantly  knowing  better  as  it  really  is.  Wide  and  limitless, 
if  you  please,  is  this  ocean;  but  man  is  constantly  navigating 
further  and  further  into  its  expanses;  and  as  far  as  he  goes 
he  knows  better  how  both  island  and  ocean  are  one  Universe, 
in  which  is  immanent  One  Mind,  whom  religious  faith  wor- 
ships as  God.  Without  introducing  at  this  point  the  ideals 
of  philosophy  and  religion,  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  prac- 
tical knowledge,  such  as  men  live  and  die  by,  as  well  as  all 
the  particular  sciences,  are  in  agreement  as  to  a  growth  of 
knowledge  of  the  One  World,  which  cannot  be  arbitrarily  lim- 
ited in  the  a  priori  way  of  the  thorough-going  Kantian  agnos- 
ticism. 

A  detailed  consideration  of  all  the  factors  and  so-called 
avenues  of  human  knowledge  would  bring  us  to  the  same 
reasonably  modest,  but  hopeful  conclusion  with  regard  to  the 
extension  of  the  limits  of  knowledge.  It  was  as  customary 
for  a  now  old-fashioned  philosophy  to  discredit  the  knowl- 
edge gained  by  the  senses,  as  it  was  for  an  old-fashioned  the- 
ology to  discredit  the  nature  and  worth  of  the  body.  We 
know,  for  example,  that  to  the  unaided,  average  eye,  the  limits 
in  the  color  scale  lie  between  the  deep  red  and  the  violet  rays; 


98  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  for  the  average  ear,  between  tones  of  perhaps  from  14 
to  a  possible  40,000  or  50,000  vibrations  in  a  second.  These 
limits  may  perhaps  be  extended  in  the  future  developments 
of  the  organs  of  sight  and  sound.  But  whether  the  limits  of 
seeing  colors  and  hearing  musical  tones  are  much  extended 
in  these  directions  or  not,  the  discoveries  of  the  constitution 
of  matter,  of  the  nature  of  material  processes,  and  of  the  laws 
of  ph3'sical  relations,  in  time  and  in  space,  which  are  made 
conceivable  for  these  senses  by  means  of  modern  instrumenta- 
tion and  experiment,  admit  of  no  such  limit.  Even  now  we 
are  having  actual  experiences  of  minute  divisions  of  material 
bodies,  with  astonishing  speed  of  motion,  and  through  for- 
merly impenetrable  media, — all  of  which  might  easily  have 
been  pronounced  beyond  the  limits  of  human  cognition,  less 
than  three  decades  ago.  And  to  lament  that  such  knowledge 
does  not  take  us  beyond  the  limits  of  the  senses  after  all,  is 
to  turn  silly  for  the  pure  sake  of  being  sorry.  That  by  sight 
we  cannot  get  at  things  which  are  by  nature  invisible,  or  by 
hearing  compass  thoughts  and  melodies  that  are  inaudible, 
is  simply  and  appropriately  to  confess  that  there  is  knowledge 
which  transcends  the  sensuous,  and  that  can  be  reached  and 
verified  only  in  some   non-sensuous  way. 

Less  easy  even  would  it  seem  to  be  to  set  arbitrary  limits 
to  the  knowledge  of  those  beings  and  those  truths  which  rea- 
son apprehends  and  validates,  in  the  exercise  of  its  higher 
faculties  of  imagination  and  thought,  and  with  the  confi- 
dence justified  by  its  loftier  sentiments  and  ideals.  The  ex- 
periences of  righteous  conduct,  of  devotion  to  duty  and  of 
satisfaction  in  its  fruits;  the  love  of  beauty  and  the  intelli- 
gent appreciation  of  the  products  and  ideals  of  art;  the  life 
of  faith  and  hope  and  resignation  as  a  steadfast  attitude 
toward  the  Infinite  Spirit,  the  conception  of  whom  represents 
the  religious  development  of  the  race; — all  these  forms  of 
human  experience  furnish  the  material  upon  the  development 
and  increased  wealth  of  which^  reflective  thinking  extends  with- 


KINDS,  DEGREES  AND  LIMITS  OF  KNOWLEDGE   99 

out  assignable  limits  the  knowledge  of  mankind.  For  here  are 
facts;  and  knowledge  of  facts  is  the  foundation  of  all 
growth  of  knowledge.  And  these  facts,  like  all  others,  solicit 
and  demand  explanation  by  the  human  mind.  P]xplanation 
of  facts  constitutes  science — a  term  which  can  not  properly  be 
arrogated  to  the  exclusive  use  of  certain  kinds  of  explanation 
for  certain  classes  of  facts.  Although  the  methods  of  proof 
are  not  identical,  and  the  character  of  the  conclusions  reached 
as  well  as  of  the  feelings  of  certainty  attaching  to  them  are 
not  precisely  the  same,  we  cannot  exclude  ethical,  gesthetical, 
and  religious  experience  from  the  domain  within  which  real 
knowledge  is  possible.  They  are  part  of  the  island  which 
is  "  the  country  of  truth " ;  and  as  we  have  already  said, 
the  island  is  not  "enclosed  by  nature  itself  within  limits  that 
can  never  be  changed."  On  the  contrary,  the  very  nature  of 
the  island  is  constantly  to  increase  its  domain  by  taking  in 
more  and  more  of  the  surrounding  ocean.  Nor  is  the  ocean 
any  longer  "  the  home  of  illusion " ;  the  less  so  constantly, 
as  not  only  the  physico-chemical  sciences,  but  also  the  forms  of 
knowledge  known  as  ethics,  aesthetics,  and  the  science  of  re- 
ligion, illuminate  and  interpret  more  of  its  infinite  expanse 
and  fathomless  depths.  Indeed,  all  these  various  ways  of 
knowing  the  Being  of  the  World  are  necessary  to  the  fuller 
knowledge;  for  they  all  suggest  and  increasingly  confirm  the 
opinion  that  It  is  indeed  the  Ground  and  the  Interpreter  of 
them  all. 

There  is,  therefore,  only  one  field  of  contention  by  conquer- 
ing which  agnosticism,  in  its  most  comprehensive  form,  can 
fix  arbitrary  and  a  priori  limits  to  the  future  growth  of  hu- 
man knowledge.  And  when  this  form  of  agnosticism  has  its 
claim  critically  examined,  it  is  found  that  instead  of  setting 
limits  to  knowledge,  it  confuses  and  misstates  the  entire 
psychological  doctrine  of  knowledge,  and  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  philosophical  theory,  makes  all  knowledge  whatever 
impossible.    Such  agnosticism,  therefore,  issues  in  a  scepticism, 


100  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

at  once  so  really  shallow  and  so  seemingly  profound,  that  it 
is  convicted  of  reaching  depths  that  seem  impenetrable  only 
because  it  skims  their  surface  so  hastily. 

The  denial  of  all  real  knowledge,  whatever  be  the  character 
of  the  object  upon  which  the  knower  expends  himself,  or  what- 
ever the  skillful  and  laborious  industry  with  which  the  ex- 
penditure is  made,  requires  a  completely  sceptical  outcome  to 
a  criticism  of  the  so-called  "  categories,"  or  fundamental  and 
constitutional  forms  of  the  activity  of  knowing  faculty.  In 
a  word,  this  theory  virtually  holds  that  man's  mental  organism, 
naturally  and  necessarily,  works  illusion,  or  the  appearance 
of  commerce  with  reality,  rather  than  a  knowledge  which  is, 
first,  an  apprehension  and  then  a  growing  comprehension,  of 
the  nature  of  reality.  Taking  the  argument  of  Kant  in  his 
celebrated  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason "  with  a  strict  con- 
sistency, such  universal  and  complete  scepticism  is  undoubt- 
edly its  logical  and  avowed  issue.  But  many  assumptions,  even 
in  this  book  as  well  as  the  main  tendency  and  principal  con- 
clusions of  the  other  two  Critiques,  are  corrective  of,  if  not 
contradictory  to,  such  a  sceptical  result.  Whether  the  criti- 
cism of  the  categories  legitimately  leads  to  a  sceptical  outcome 
must  occupy  us  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VI 

PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

Descriptive  psychology  must  be  followed  by  criticism,  if 
we  are  to  arrive  at  any  tenable  theory  of  knowledge  as  a  worthy 
part  of  systematic  philosophy.  This  criticism  at  the  very  be- 
ginning reveals  the  influence  upon  all  our  thinking,  and  so 
upon  all  human  knowledge,  of  certain  principles.  Continued 
still  further,  the  same  criticism  discovers  certain  presupposi- 
tions, which  are  customarily  only  matters  of  feeling  or  of 
faith,  and  certain  implicates  which,  although  not  ordinarily 
recognized,  really  lie  hidden  in  every  act  of  cognition.  These 
principles,  presuppositions,  and  implicates,  must  be  subjected 
to  reflective  thinking  in  order  to  arrive  at  a  philosophical 
theory  of  knowledge. 

If  now  we  turn  to  so-called  "  pure  "  or  "  formal  "  logic,  in 
the  shape  in  which  it  was  cultivated  and  prevailed  from  the 
days  of  Aristotle  downward  until  nearly  the  present  date,  we 
find  that  its  authorities  reduced  the  principles  of  all  thought 
to  the  following  two :  "  The  Principle  of  Identity  and  Non- 
contradiction " ;  and  "  The  Principle  of  Sufficient  Keason." 
For  its  statement  of  these  principles  logic  has,  at  different 
times,  adopted  different  formulas;  sometimes  words,  some- 
times letters,  sometimes  numbers,  sometimes  geometrical  fig- 
ures or  other  symbols.  As  a  true  interpretation,  or  even 
description,  of  the  warm-blooded,  inconsequential,  and  fleet- 
footed  life  of  real  thought,  all  these  formulas  are  as  unsatis- 
factory as  are  the  geometrical  arrangements  of  the  electrons 
made  in  order  to  explain  the  qualitative  differences  of  the 
chemical  atoms.  Indeed,  all  such  symbols,  instead  of  explain- 
ing or  faithfully  describing  the  actual  processes  which  go  on 
in  the  formation  and  extension  of  those  acts  of  judging  which 

101 


102  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

men  call  "  knowing,"  are  too  often  misleading  as  to  the  essen- 
tial  nature   of   the  processes   themselves. 

That  knowledge  is  not  all  thought,  nor  the  cognitive  act 
all  to  be  explained  in  terms  of  the  logical  processes,  has  al- 
ready been  made  sufficiently  clear.  But  it  has  been  made 
equally  clear  that  there  is  no  knowledge,  however  intuitive 
it  may  seem,  which  does  not  involve  judgment,  and  no  growth 
of  knowledge  which  does  not  require  inference  and  the  con- 
catenation, or  chaining  together,  of  judgments.  The  real  sig- 
nificance and  influence  of  the  two  alleged  principles  of  all 
thought  just  referred  to  must,  therefore,  be  understood  in 
order  to  interpret  the  nature,  and  guarantee  the  validity,  of 
the  human  knowing  faculty. 

It  was  customary  for  the  older  treatises  upon  formal  logic 
to  throw  the  Principle  of  Identity  into  some  such  form  as  the 
following:  A  is  A;  and,  then,  the  Principle  of  Non-contradic- 
tion could  properly  take  the  obverse  shape  in  the  formula: 
A  is  not  non-A.  Looked  at  more  closely,  three  observations  are 
at  once  suggested  as  helpful  for  elucidating  the  meaning  for 
experience  of  this  interesting,  if  exceedingly  dry  way  of  pic- 
turing a  mental  phenomenon;  or  rather,  of  stating  a  rule 
governing  all  mental  phenomena,  so  far  as  they  are  phenomena 
of  thought.  And,  first,  that  A  is  ("really  and  truly,"  aa 
children  say)  A,  and  that  A  is  not  non-.4.,  cannot  possibly 
be  made  the  subject  of  argument.  For  if  I  do  not  hold  fast 
to  the  judgment  or  belief, — call  it  what  one  will, — that  the 
first  A,  or  A  in  the  place  of  subject,  is  A,  I  cannot  affirm 
whether  it  is  identical  with  the  predicate  A,  or  not.  It  fol- 
lows, in  the  same  way,  that  the  verity  of  the  principle  of 
non-contradiction  cannot  be  argued.  With  regard  to  both 
.4  s,  whose  identity  I  am  called  upon  to  affirm,  I  can  only 
state  my  confidence  in  the  following  terms:  This  subject-A 
is  subject- J.;  and  this  predicate-A  is  predicate-/!.  And 
now  I  am  ready  to  go  the  whole  thing  over  again  and  end 
with  an  equally  barren  and  unillumining  result. 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  103 

But,  second,  it  is  not  in  the  spirit  of  jesting,  or  of  mock- 
ing at  the  many  well-meant  attempts  to  reduce  to  symbolism 
the  principles  of  the  life  of  thought,  that  we  affirm  the  mis- 
leading and  untruthful  character  of  the  principle  of  identity, 
whether  as  applied  to  the  reality  of  the  Self,  or  of  Things, 
or  to  the  actuality  of  the  relations  happening  between  them. 
A  is  never  really  A;  there  is  neither  in  reality  nor  in  think- 
ing any  such  identity  or  affirmation  of  identity  as  can  be  in- 
telligently symbolized  in  any  such  way.  Things  are  never 
identical  with  other  things;  much  less  even  are  selves  identi- 
cal with  other  selves.  Indeed,  here  the  maintenance  of  heing- 
at-all  forbids  the  establishment  of  such  identity.  Neither 
is  any  Self,  or  any  Thing,  so  far  as  we  know  or  can  know, 
identical  with  itself,  in  the  only  meaning  which,  as  it  would 
seem,  the  formula  "  A-is-A  "  is  fitted  to  express.  The  very  life 
of  the  Self,  the  essential  being  of  the  Thing,  consists  in  change. 
Strictly  speaking,  it  is  at  all,  only  as  it  is  not  the  same  as 
it  was — even  at  the  beginning  of  that  moment — the  actual 
"  is  " — which  is  spanned  by  the  grasp  of  a  single  act  of  cog- 
nitive consciousness.  Still  further :  to  think  is  to  change. 
The  knower  cannot,  even  while  knowing,  remain  the  same 
with  himself,  in  any  such  meaning  of  the  word  "  same  "  as 
is  fully  symbolized  by  logical  formulas.  And  to  predicate  A 
of  any  subject-Thing  called  A,  is  to  recognize,  in  their  effect 
upon  our  consciousness,  certain  changes  which  we  are  com- 
pelled to  suppose  are  changes  in  the  states  and  activities  of 
the  real  thing.  So  far  as  concrete  experience  goes,  therefore, 
we  never  come  upon  any  example  of  identity  in  the  form  sym- 
bolized by  logic.  Thought  discriminates  similarities  and  di- 
versities. As  an  accompaniment  of  all  sense-perception,  or 
rather  as  an  essential  element  in  the  knowledge  of  things 
gained  through  the  senses,  the  intellect  recognizes  or  infers 
enough  of  likeness  between  the  successive  appearances  which 
it  localizes  more  or  less  definitely  up  or  dowoi,  to  right  or  left, 
near  by  or  far  away,  to  warrant  attributing  them  to  one  and 


104  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  same  thing.  How  much  the  similarity  must  be,  or  how 
rapid  may  be  the  changes  that  can  ta^e  place  without  destroy- 
ing the  reality  of  the  thing,  only  experience  can  help  us  to 
decide.  Enough  for  practical  purposes  is  ordinarily  enough 
to  satisfy  the  mind.  Is  this  oak  tree  the  same  ("identically" 
the  same)  with  that  which  I  set  out  as  a  boy,  now  that  I  come 
back  as  an  old  man,  to  view  it  in  my  boy-hood  home?  Yes 
and  No, — according  to  the  point  of  view.  Am  I,  who  remem- 
ber setting  it  out,  and  who  am  now  sad  or  pleased  at  the 
memory,  the  same  ("identically"  the  same)  I,  that  I  was 
then?  Yes  and  No, — according  to  the  point  of  view.  But 
surely,  if  I  cannot  say,  not  only  I  am  I,  but  I  that  now  am, 
this  present  I,  am  the  same  I  that  then  was,  and  has  been  since 
then  and  now,  there  is  no  possible  warrant  for  my  affirming 
the  identity  of  the  tree.  Now  all  this  is  but  to  say  that  sim- 
ilarities are  matters  of  experience,  either  through  sense-per- 
ception and  self-consciousness,  or  through  memory  and  infer- 
ence. But  in  all  this  there  is  no  recognition  of  the  principle 
of  identity,  as  it  is  symbolized  by  logic  and  strictly  so-called. 

In  the  third  place,  we  see  that  the  principle  which  logic  has 
tried  to  symbolize  in  so  barren  and  unsatisfactory  a  way,  may 
be  re-stated  as  it  is  actually  in  control  of  the  life  and  growth 
of  the  human  intellect,  in  somewhat  the  following  man- 
ner. In  all  judgment,  truth  requires  a  certain,  at  least  momen- 
tarily fixed  relation  of  agreement  or  disagreement  between  the 
subject  and  the  predicate  of  the  same  judgment.  We  may 
change  our  judgments  about  both  things  and  selves.  Indeed, 
the  growth  of  knowledge,  the  correction  of  error,  the  contra- 
diction of  falsehood,  all  require  a  change  of  judgments.  If 
we  represent  any  particular  thing  to  ourselves  by  A  as  the 
subject  of  all  judgments  about  it;  then  we  must  be  con- 
stantly changing  the  predicate  As,  in  order  to  express  our 
knowledge  of  the  subject-/L  And  as  its  predicates  are 
changed,  of  course  the  thing  as  known  by  us  cannot  remain 
the    same   thing.     But   every   particular   judgment,    affirming 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  105 

or  denying  A  of  A,  must  have  a  fixed  meaning  for  the  eub- 
ject-A  and  also  for  the  predicate-4,  if  truth  of  experience  ia 
to  be  expressed  in  that  particular  judgment.  For  example, 
we  may  say  that  the  same  chameleon  is  now  one  color  and 
then  another;  that  it  is  reddish  in  one  place  and  greenish  in 
another;  that  it  is  now  changing  from  red  to  green.  But  I 
cannot  say  that  the  same  chameleon  is  both  red  and  green  at 
precisely  the  same  spot  and  precisely  the  same  instant  of  time. 
Why  not?  Because  experience  does  not  show  me  colored  sur- 
faces in  this  way.  If  now  by  the  A  in  the  place  of  the  predi- 
cate, I  mean  one  of  two  characteristics  which  experience  has 
shown  me  to  be,  not  only  exclusive  of  each  other,  but  to  have 
opposed  or  contradictory  significance ;  then  I  cannot  aflBrm  them 
to  belong  to  the  same  subject-zl  at  the  same  instant  of  time. 
In  a  word,  the  judgment  must,  in  its  meaning,  correspond  with 
the  experience  of  the  facts.  Judging  faculty  is  bound  to  con- 
sistency, since  its  whole  intent  and  function  is  to  represent 
the  truth  of  reality.  Lying  and  self-deceit  illustrate  this  in- 
herent obligation,  which  is  of  the  nature  of  a  necessity,  a 
binding  law,  as  explicitly  and  forcefully  as  do  the  most  care- 
fully prepared  judgments  of  the  exact  sciences. 

There  is  something  more  than  this,  however,  which  is  in- 
dicated with  reference  to  the  procedure  of  the  intellect  in  all 
its  attempts  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  things.  This  is  a  cer- 
tain obligation  to  orderliness.  One  hears  much  well-deserved 
criticism  of  the  average  knower,  because  his  thoughts  are  not 
clear,  his  observations  are  not  accurate  and  complete;  and 
the  objects  about  which  he  speaks  seem  somehow  to  com- 
bine characteristics  which  science  knows  are  either  relatively 
incompatible  or  absolutely  contradictory; — in  a  word,  his 
mind  is  much  of  the  time  a  hurly-burly,  a  "  blooming 
confusion."  With  such  a  mind,  stubborn  prejudices,  wild  con- 
jectures, intolerable  superstitions,  hideous  beliefs,  are  affirmed 
with  all  the  confidence  and  apparent  sincerity  which  should 
characterize  only  the  most  well-established  of  cognitive  judg- 


106  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ments.  With  such  a  mind,  it  is  often  difficult  to  say  whether 
there  really  is  any  definite  conscious  perception  or  concep« 
tion  answering  to  the  subject-^ ;  or  any  distinctly  recognized 
similarity,  or  difference,  or  relation,  corresponding  to  that 
which  is  seemingly  affirmed  or  denied  by  the  predicate-A. 
In  what  respect  can  such  a  mind  be  said  to  be  ruled  by  the 
principle  of  identity  and  non-contradiction,  in  any  strict  and 
intelligible  way?  In  answer  to  this  question  it  must  be  re- 
,  plied  that  all  the  judgments  of  such  a  mind  imply  some  sort 
of  a  successful  attempt  by  the  human  intellect  to  bring  order 
into  what,  if  not  thus  intellectualized,  would  be  an  unorganized 
mass  of  experience; — would,  the  rather,  be  inconceivable  chaos, 
and  not  experience  at  all.  Insight  into  the  nature  of  this  or- 
dering process  of  thought  as  it  enters  into  all  knowledge, 
is  not  afforded,  however,  by  construing  further  the  principle 
of  identity.  Such  insight  requires  a  criticism  of  the  categories, 
or  fundamental  forms  of  that  "  ordering"  of  experience  which 
knowledge  involves;  and  which  knowledge  implies  as  belong- 
ing also  to  the  reality  of  things.  But  this  implied  correspond- 
ence of  those  forms  of  human  thought  which  are  in  control 
of  the  growth  of  knowledge  to  the  forms  of  reality,  is  a  meta- 
physical assumption  and  not  a  logical  formula. 

No  one  will  be  satisfied  that  the  entire  meaning  of  what  is 
implied  in  the  principle  of  identity  and  non-contradiction  has 
been  explained  by  saying  what  has  already  been  said.  Surely, 
something  is  permanent;  all  does  not  change;  or  at  least, 
there  is  something  which  limits  the  change.  Even  the  ex- 
periences which  both  assume  and  discover  that  the  changes 
assigned  to  any  subject-A,  generally  if  not  universally,  follow 
some  sort  of  order  in  respect  of  the  character  of  these  changes, 
imply  as  much.     "  As  a  rule,"  A  goes  through  the  changes 

A^,  A^,  A^, A  ";  but  does  not  change  over  into  the  series 

B^,  B~,  B^,. . .  .B^;  and  B  has  equal  respect  for  its  own 
character  and  for  the  character  peculiar  to  .4.  On  this  as- 
sumption,  which  both  underlies  and  is  confirmed  by  all  ex- 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  107 

perience,  the  various  particular  sciences  proceed  to  develope 
themselves  and  so  to  increase  the  vi^orld's  stock  of  knowledge. 
In  this  assumption,  however,  we  find  two  conceptions  of  a 
highly  metaphysical  character.  They  are  the  conceptions  of  Law 
and  of  Being,  or  Substance — the  ontological  and  not  merely 
grammatical  or  logical  subject  of  changing  predicates.  Thus 
the  standard  which  the  so-called  principle  of  identity  sets  up 
for  the  cognitive  judgment  may  be  expressed  in  some  such 
terms  as  the  following:  The  motive  and  the  goal  (the  compel- 
ling law  of  its  life)  of  the  cognitive  judgment  is  to  connect  to- 
gether in  the  terms  of  judgment  what  has  been  cognized  as 
being  objectively,  or  really,  connected  together.  For  the  in- 
tellect of  man  is  not  puttering  wath  its  own  sensuous  impres- 
sions, ideas,  and  conceptions,  in  the  effort  to  get  them  into 
an  Eesthetically  pleasing  logical  form;  it  is  trying,  with  much 
courage  and  hope,  and  with  more  or  less  of  commendable  and 
trustworthy  result,  to  know  things  as  they  really  are. 

Where  this  so  strange  and  evanescent  notion  of  identity 
comes  from,  we  do  not  have  long  or  far  to  seek,  when  once 
we  have  taken  the  psychological  point  of  view.  As  will  ap- 
pear later  on,  it  comes  from  our  experience  with  ourselves. 
But  even  at  present  it  would  seem  to  be  reasonably  clear  that 
so  much  of  identity  as  it  attributes  to  things  implies  thus  much 
of  identity  which  it  knows  itself  to  have:  The  Self  is  a  self- 
conscious  life  conformable  to  law,  and  maintaining  its  so-called 
identity  by  this  conformity.  With  regard  to  the  Being  of 
the  World,  it  will  appear  that  modern  science  agrees  with  the 
thought  of  the  ancient  saying,  however  crudely  expressed,  of 
Chwang-Tsze : — 

"  The  Tao  is  always  One,  and  yet  it  requires  change." 

The  Principle  of  Sufficient  Eeason,  when  we  come  to  ques- 
tion its  real  meaning  for  the  guaranty  and  the  growth  of 
knowledge,  is  scarcely  less  vague  and  trouidesome  to  under- 
stand than  is  the  principle  of  identity.     What  do  we  mean  by 


108  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  reason  "  in  this  connection  ?  And  how  shall  we  define  "  suf- 
ficient," or  know  what  is  really  a  sufficient  reason  in  any- 
particular  case?  The  verbal  and  symbolical  terms  which  for- 
mal logic  has  employed  for  the  expression  of  its  truths  seem 
to  throw  little  or  no  clear  light  upon  the  actual  processes  of 
the  human  mind  in  the  growth  of  knowledge.  For  this  "  suffi- 
cient" cause,  the  modern  interest  in  iruth  has  turned  almost 
wholly  away  from  discussions  and  treatises  of  formal  logic 
to  concrete  inquiries  as  to  the  methods  which  the  particular 
sciences  actually  find  successful  in  increasing  the  body  of  their 
accepted  formulas.  And,  indeed,  we  almost  never  in  real  life 
argue  our  way  to  truth,  about  ourselves  or  about  things,  along 
the  path  marked  out  by  any  of  the  forms  of  the  syllogism.  We 
read,  and  learn  the  truths  which  the  race  has  come  to  accept 
as  the  result  of  centuries  of  experience.  We  listen,  or  ob- 
serve, or  think, — always  fitfully  and  with  wandering  atten- 
tion and  in  random  fashion; — and  then  all  at  once  truths 
come  flashing  in  upon,  or  slowly  welling  up  from  the  depths 
before,  the  conscious  mind.  Arguing  in  terms  of  the  syllo- 
gism is  for  the  testing  of  judgments,  for  the  confirmation  of 
truth  and  the  confutation  of  error.  Even  when  thus  employed, 
whether  in  scientific  assembles  or  legislative  halls,  whether  in 
study,  shop,  or  mart,  argument  convinces,  if  at  all,  chiefly  by 
its  ofi^er  of  hitherto  unknown  facts,  or  by  its  suggestion  of  new 
points  of  view  from  which  to  reconsider  the  bearing  of  facts 
quite  well  known  before.  To  say  this  is  not  to  deny  the 
work  of  intellect  in  the  cognition  of  truth,  or  the  part  which 
inference  plays  in  the  establishment  and  growth  of  knowledge. 
It  is  simply  to  reaffirm  the  conviction  that  all  abstract 
formulas  quite  completely  fail  to  set  before  our  eyes  the  com- 
plexity and  subtlety  of  the  actual  life  of  knowledge. 

The  fact  which  underlies  the  statement  of  the  principle  of 
sufficient  reason  is  plain.  By  steps,  which  we  call  reasoning 
and  ascribe  chiefly  to  intellect,  starting  from  known  facts  of 
self-consciousness  and  sense-perception,  we  do  reach  hitherto  un- 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  109 

known  truths  of  a  more  or  less  general  application.  In  all 
the  earlier  developments  of  mental  life  the  procedure  shares 
little  or  none  at  all,  in  the  characteristics  of  a  truly  logical 
process.  There  is  little  or  no  consciousness  answering  to  the 
words  "  therefore  "  or  "  because."  Accordingly,  the  growth  of 
knowledge  at  this  stage  is  not  correctly  expressed  by  the  con- 
sciousness that  A  is  C  because  A  is  B  and  B  is  C.  In  the 
stream  of  consciousness  I  find  A  is  judged  to  be  5;  and  then 
(meaning  by  this  no  recognized  causal  connection  but  only  a 
fact  of  sequence  in  the  next  moment  of  consciousness)  I  find, 
for  an  unrecognized  reason,  that  A  is  judged  to  be  C.  It  is  fre- 
quent repetition  of  these  connected  facts  in  experience  which 
"  rubs  in,"  so  to  say,  and  establishes  a  mental  connection 
between  the  ideas  of,  or  thoughts  about,  the  things  experienced. 
As  experience  developes  and  becomes  more  complicated,  two 
results  take  place  with  regard  to  the  connections  in  conscious- 
ness between  the  cognitive  judgments.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
judgments  tlicmselves  become  more  complicated  in  character 
and  in  their  tendency  to  run  in  a  variety  of  directions:  The 
A,  which  was  simply,  or  chiefly  B,  and  the  B  which  was  sim- 
ply or  chiefly  C,  are  now  known  to  be  also  D.  E.  F iV; 

either  judgment  (A  is  5  or  5  is  C)  may,  therefore,  be  followed 
in  consciousness  by  any  one  of  several  judgments  connecting  it 

with  D.  E.  F N.    The  practical  interests  to  be  served  will 

determine  which  one  of  these  many  judgments,  it  shall  be. 
Indeed,  in  most  of  what  is  called  "  thinking  "  among  human 
beings,  and  probably  in  all  of  what  we  call  by  the  same  term, 
in  the  case  of  the  lower  animals,  the  leap  from  judgment  to 
judgment  is  as  unreflective,  as  little  truly  logical  in  the  higher 
meaning  of  this  word,  as  is  the  leap  to  the  single  judgment 
which  affirms  a  state  of  the  self,  or  a  quality  of  some  thing. 
On  the  other  hand,  however,  with  the  growth  of  variableness 
and  heterogeneity  among  the  judgments,  there  is  also  the  more 
important  development  of  uniformity  and  orderliness.  Nature 
compels  us  to  make  fixed  connections  between  our  judgments; 


110  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  the  intellect,  at  first  chiefly  in  the  interest  of  purely  prac- 
tical considerations,  cheerfully  responds.  Our  pains  and  pleas- 
ures, our  gratified  desires  or  disappointments,  excite  us  to  ob- 
serve what  things  and  what  events  are  connected  in  reality; 
and  those  which  are,  either  for  our  weal  or  our  woe,  actually 
connected  become  connected  in  our  thought.  With  the  child, 
it  is  relations  between  his  bodily  organs,  in  their  uses,  and 
between  them  and  the  things  of  his  environment — ^his  food, 
drink,  toys,  tools,  etc. — which  are  earliest  and  most  firmly 
bound  together  in  judgment.  With  this  increasing  experience 
of  uniformity,  the  fixing  and  deepening  of  expectation  goes 
along.  To  this  expectation,  there  are,  to  be  sure,  many  sur- 
prises and  disappointments,  not  only  for  the  child  but  also 
for  the  adult;  not  only  for  the  plain  man's  consciousness, 
with  its  more  purely  practical  ends  in  view,  but  also  for  the 
scientific  expert.  But  on  the  whole,  the  false  expectations  get 
corrected  by  experience;  the  correct  expectations  become  con- 
firmed; and  thus  the  development  of  cognitive  judgments  and 
the  growth  of  knowledge,  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race, 
takes  place. 

If  this  were  all  of  human  thinking,  the  conclusions  of  the 
schools  which  resolve  the  principle  of  sufhcient  reason,  and 
its  correlate  in  reality,  the  principle  of  causation,  into  the 
flow  of  sensations  and  ideas,  accompanied  by  feelings  of  ex- 
pectation, along  the  channels  worn  by  custom,  would  be  ade- 
quate to  explain  the  contribution  of  intellect  to  knowledge. 
But  this  is  not  all.  At  some  time  in  the  mental  develop- 
ment— and  doubtless,  earlier  in  some  cases  than  in  others — 
the  demand  for  an  explanation  of  its  own  experience  is  made 
by  the  human  Sel'f.  We  wish  to  know,  not  simply  that,  in  fact, 
our  experiences  are  more  or  less  uniformly  connected  in  time, 
but  rather  the  "  real "  explanation  wJiy  they  are  thus  connected. 
This  demand  for  a  real  explanation  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  life  of  man's  intellect.  It  is  intellectual  curiosity, 
in  the  stricter  and  more  appropriate  meaning  of  this  term. 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  111 

Curious,  indeed,  are  the  higher  animals,  and  prompted  by  this 
curiosity  to  a  certain  sort  of  investigation.  The  dog  desires 
to  know,  whether  this  strange-looking  object  is  good  for  food, 
or  not;  where  the  game  he  has  been  chasing  has  gone;  how  to 
open  the  gate  through  which  his  master  has  disappeared. 
Within  certain  rather  indefinite  limits,  the  animal  will  ex- 
periment and  pass  from  judgment  to  judgment  by  mental  proc- 
esses which  simulate  the  human  forms  of  thinking,  in  its 
desire  to  attain  certain  practical  ends.  But  that  the  animals, 
even  the  most  intelligent  of  them,  ever  desire  explanation 
for  its  own  sake, — i.  e.,  for  the  satisfaction  which  it  affords 
the  intellectual  nature,  there  is  no  adequate  proof.  Neither 
do  they  give  evidence  of  an  effort  to  ground  this  explanation 
in  the  causal  relations  of  real  beings,  Man's  curiosity,  how- 
ever, is  intellectual;  by  thinking,  he  wills  to  find  out  the  ex- 
planation in  reality  of  his  subjective  states.  Thus  is  the  "  prin- 
ciple of  reason "  discoverable  in  the  character  of  the  motif 
which  induces  and  guides  so  much  of  the  development  of 
knowledge  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

Little  experience  is  needed  under  the  influence  of  this  mo- 
tive of  intellectual  curiosity  to  discover  that  the  real,  and 
really  most  important  explanations  of  many  things,  and  many 
events,  do  not  appear  to  the  senses  or  to  thought  as  in  imme- 
diate and  obvious  connection  with  the  things  and  the  events 
themselves.  The  reason  for  the  bird  which  I  see  now  as  a 
robin  in  the  tree,  being  a  robin  rather  than  a  thrush,  is  not 
to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  same  bird  which  I  saw 
a  moment  before  in  the  bush.  The  reason  for  the  being  of 
the  robin  was  in  the  character  of  the  egg  from  which  the  bird 
was  hatched,  or  in  the  characters  of  the  parent  birds  from 
which  the  egg  sprung.  The  reason  why  my  tooth  aches  now 
is  not  simply  the  fact  that  it  ached  five  minutes  ago,  but 
"  something  is  the  matter,"  as  we  confidently  say,  with  that 
tooth.  Thus,  although  we  are  always  compelled,  however  ab- 
stractly   we    may    argue    about    the    relation    of    cause    and 


112  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

effect  as  timeless,  to  regard  the  effect  as  following  the  cause 
in  time,  mere  sequence  in  time,  even  when  it  seems  most 
immediate  and  obvious,  does  not  of  itself  satisfactorily  explain 
the  connection  in  reality  of  our  subjective  states  of  knowl- 
edge. There  is,  then,  a  relation  here  which  thought  needs 
to  recognize  and  to  comprehend  that  is  other  than  the  rela- 
tion of  sequence  in  time. 

As  the  growth  of  that  form  of  knowledge  which  we  assign 
to  the  particular  sciences  takes  place,  the  connections  which 
we  feel  the  need  of  making  in  order  to  satisfy  the  demands 
of  the  intellect  for  the  explanation  of  all  experience,  become 
infinitely  complicated,  subtle,  swiftly  changing  or  eternally 
existing;  they  become  further  removed  from  the  senses  and 
more  imperative  and  arduous  in  their  demands  upon  the  im- 
agination. Classes  of  things,  and  laws  to  rule  over  them,  are 
thought  to  be  established;  in  this  way,  for  the  moment,  the 
reasons  for  the  being  of  the  things  and  for  their  uniform 
modes  of  action  and  reaction,  seem  simpler  and  more  easy  to 
be  grasped.  But  the  reasons  for  the  existence  of  any  par- 
ticular thing  being  just  what  it  is,  being  that  and  no  other 
thing,  are  indefinitely  multiplied  by  the  discoveries  of  science. 
No  law  accounts  for  the  definite  concrete  behavior  of  any 
Self,  or  any  Thing:  neither  is  the  so-called  law  a  real  ex- 
planation; it  is  only  the  formula  which  symbolizes  more  or 
less  accurately  one  of  the  myriad  aspects  of  the  behavior  of 
an  indefinite  number  of  things,  when  these  things  are  under 
certain  more  or  less  definitely  fixed  relations  to  one  another. 
But  every  Thing,  at  every  moment  of  its  existence,  and  in 
respect  of  every  one  of  its  actual  changes  or  forms  of  behavior, 
is  obeying  scores  of  different  so-called  laws,  and  is  manifest- 
ing scores  of  its  indefinite,  and  largely  unknown,  number  of 
qualities  and  properties.  This  infinity  of  properties  and  pos- 
sible relations,  all  of  which  must  be  regarded  as  knowable, 
not  in  their  abstract  form,  but  in  their  precise  combination  as 
applied  here  and  now  to  this  one  thing,  constitutes  the  com- 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  113 

plete  explanation  M'hich  the  intellect  seeks  as  its  ideal.  This, 
if  found  out,  as  it  never  can  be  by  the  finite  mind,  would  be 
the  only  quite  "sufficient  reason"  for  the  particular  thing, 
or  the  particular  event. 

How  is  it — we  must  still  further  ask  ourselves — that  one 
thing  can  explain  another  thing,  or  one  event  explain  another 
event?  By  processes  of  thought,  the  intellect  connects  them 
together  in  a  way  which  gives  it  satisfaction.  We  find  "  the 
reason,"  as  we  fondly  say,  and  we  feel  gratified.  Nor  is  this 
gratification  due  wholly  to  the  fact  that  we  may  now  know 
how  more  safely  and  effectively  to  use  the  particular  thing; 
to  procure,  or  to  meet  the  coming  of  the  particular  event. 
Quite  irrespective  of  selfish  interests,  or  practical  concern- 
ment, the  mind  of  man  is  satisfied  with  having  answered  the 
question,  Why?  There  is,  therefore,  another  still  more 
deeply  lying  question  in  which  the  philosophy  of  knowledge 
takes  its  chief  interest  while  subjecting  to  its  criticism  the 
so-called  principle  of  sufficient  reason.  This  problem  may  be 
at  least  proposed,  if  not  solved,  in  the  following  way. 

What  men  eagerly  seek  for  by  examining  experience  in  the 
interests  of  its  explanation,  is  not  the  bare  satisfaction  of 
the  intellect  in  seeming  to  attain  what  it  is  impelled  to  seek. 
It  is  not  reasons  for  their  own  sake  which  thinking  tries  to 
devise.  It  is  truth  of  reality  which  thought  endeavors  to 
find.  To  give  reasons,  which  seem  plausible,  but  which  start 
from  the  mist  and  end  in  the  darkness  of  invisible  space,  is 
sorry  work.  By  thought,  let  us  get  at  reality;  and  to  do 
this  the  connections  which  thinking  establishes  between  judg- 
ments must  correspond  to  the  connections  which  in  reality 
exist  between  things.  Logic,  for  its  own  sake,  is  poor  stuff. 
Eeflective  thinking,  which  leads  from  observed  fact  to  the 
truths  of  nature's  existences  and  processes,  and  to  the  truths  of 
human  life,  and  of  the  relations  between  the  two — this  it  is 
which  men  prize  and  try  ever  more  and  more  to  attain. 

Kant  confesses  that  it  was  Hume's  sceptical  analysis  of  the 


114  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

idea  of  causality  wliich  aroused  liim  from  •  liis  "  dogmatic 
slumber "  and  stimulated  him  to  the  task  of  criticizing  more 
thoroughly  the  principles  of  human  cognitive  faculty.  For 
Hume  had  found  in  this  idea  only  the  sul)jective  fact  of  a 
series  of  sensations,  or  mental  images,  bound  together  by  cus- 
tom, and  arousing  expectations  of  future  similar  series,  a3 
matters  of  course.  But  such  an  explanation  did  not  account, 
in  the  opinion  of  Kant,  for  the  "  objective "  character  of 
the  idea.  It  was  plain,  he  held,  that  the  very  nature  of  the  con- 
nection subsumed  under  the  titles,  "  cause  and  effect,"  was 
not  to  be  regarded  as  obtaining  in  the  ideas  of  the  subject 
only;  the  connection,  on  the  contrary,  was  affirmed,  or  rather 
known,  as  existing  and  operating  between  the  objects  them- 
selves. And  now  since,  according  to  Kant,  the  very  constitu- 
tion of  the  object  is  imparted  to  it  by  the  constitutional  activi- 
ties of  the  intellect, — that  is,  mind  makes  its  own  objec+s 
according  to  mind's  own  nature,  and  what  we  call  Nature  in 
the  large  is  the  work  of  human  nature; — we  must  find  in  this 
same  intellect  which  attributes  the  causal  connection  to  ob- 
jects, the  law  that  will  account  for  the  attribution  itself. 
The  problem  then  becomes :  What  is  there  in  this  particular 
form  of  sequence  in  time  which  makes  it  worthy  to  be  con- 
sidered as  "  objective " ;  that  is,  as  a  relation  of  causality 
between  objects?  Kant  answers  the  problem  as  follows:  The 
explanation  of  the  causal  connection  attributed  to  objects  is 
to  be  found  in  the  fact  of  the  sequence  of  objects  according  to 
a  fixed  rule. 

This  answer  of  the  Kantian  criticism,  however,  goes  but  little 
farther  towards  explaining  our  confidence  that  the  relations 
which  we  establish  by  thinking  between  our  judgments,  repre- 
sent relations  really  existing  between  things,  than  did  the  sen- 
sationalism of  Hume.  The  principle  of  causality,  as  actually 
effective  in  a  real  world,  cannot  be  substituted  for  the  sub- 
jective principle  of  sufficient  reason,  in  this  off-hand  fashion, 
Let  us  go,  then^  once  more  to  the  facts  of  experience.     These 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  115 

can  be  expressed  only  by  admitting  a  new  class  of  terms.  We 
believe  that  we  ourselves,  and  all  the  various  other  selves,  and 
other  things,  stand  together  in  one  world  on  terms  of  action 
and  reaction.  This  belief  may  be  expressed  in  various  ways. 
It  may  take  the  form  of  a  doctrine  of  the  transmission  of 
energy^  of  power  to  do  work,  of  energy  kinetic  and  energy 
stored,  or  energy  of  position.  We  may  drop  this  technical 
language  of  science,  as  we  all,  even  including  the  men  of 
science  themselves,  oixlinarily  do:  and  then  we  may  speak  of 
things  and  selves  as  influencing  one  another;  or  of  their 
doing  something  to  one  another;  or  of  their  making 
one  another  do  this  or  do  that.  Unless,  however,  we  speak 
in  some  such  way,  we  cannot  even  hint  at  what  human  experi- 
ence really  is,  to  say  nothing  of  clearly  and  forcibly  expressing 
its  essential  meaning.  Yet  in  all  this  manner  of  speaking, 
elements  are  freely  introduced  which  the  objective  sense-im- 
pressions do  not  supply.  No  one  ever  saw,  heard,  smelled,  or 
tasted  any  energy,  whether  kinetic  or  stored.  Things  are  seen 
to  change  their  shapes,  their  positions  in  space,  their  spatial 
relations  to  other  things.  These  changes  in  dilfcrent  things 
are  sometimes  simultaneous,  sometimes  in  more  or  less  definite 
sequence,  sometimes  apparently  far  separated  both  in  space 
and  in  time.  But  the  mysterious  passing  of  influence,  the  com- 
pulsion of  one  thing  as  exercised  over  another,  and  as  suffered 
by  that  other,  nowhere  sensibly  appears. 

To  ascertain  more  completely  what  there  is  in  this  sort  of 
experience,  let  us  take  an  example  or  two.  Here  are  the 
different  parts  of  a  building  which  are  to  be  considered  in 
their  objective  relations  to  one  another.  In  time  and  space  I 
may  arrange  my  perception  and  thought  of  them  at  will. 
From  top  to  bottom,  from  right  to  left,  or  in  the  reverse  di- 
rections, I  may  run  my  eye  over  its  different  portions  from 
A,  B,  C,  and  D  to  N;  or  from  N  through  D,  C,  B  to  A;  or 
skipping  from  D  io  A  and  back  again  to  C  or  N.  And  I  may 
be  a  longer  and  a  shorter  time  about  it,  at  my  will.     But  I 


116  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

know  that  in  the  same  time  all  these  different  portions  of  the 
building  actually  stand  together,  each  in  a  different  space 
and  in  fixed  spatial  relations  to  one  another;  and  all  this 
knowledge  of  the  object  implies  the  object's  independence 
of  my  will.  This  arrangement  of  the  parts  is  fixed  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  of  the  object,  and  not  according  to  my  sub- 
jective procedure  in  knowing  or  thinking  the  object.  I  may 
further  direct  my  attention  to  more  invisible,  but  not  less 
important  relations  between  the  various  parts  of  this  same 
object.  From  below  upward,  A  is  "  sustaining  "  B,  B  is  sus- 
taining C,  and  so  on  to  N ;  and  from  above  downward,  N  is 
"  pressing  "  upon  the  part  below  it,  and  all  above  is  pressing 
upon  D,  and  D  on  C,  and  so  on  down  to  ^.  Or  sideways,  B 
is  "  binding "  A  to  C,  and  is  itself  "  separated "  from  D  by 
C ;  and  so  on  to  N.  What  now  would  be  expected  in  case  there 
should  be  developed  any  great  efficiency  in  the  power  of  im- 
portant portions  of  this  same  building  to  "  sustain  pressure," 
to  "  bind  together,"  and  to  "  keep  asunder "  ?  Experience 
allows  no-  uncertain  answer  to  such  a  question  as  this.  The 
solution  of  such  a  problem  is  not  dependent  on  human  senses 
or  on  the  laws  of  the  human  intellect.  Nature  spells  "  ruin  " 
as  the  answer. 

When  we  ask  after  the  source  from  which,  ever  fresh  and 
inexhaustible,  comes  our  knowledge  of  things  as  causally  re- 
lated, we  need  not  go  far  astray.  The  explanation  has  been 
suggested,  if  not  given  with  sufficient  fullness,  in  the  previous 
analysis  of  the  nature  and  origin  of  all  human  cognitive 
activity.  It  is  the  experience  with  ourselves  as  causes;  it  is 
the  knowledge  of  ourselves  as  agents  with  feeling-full  and 
purposeful  activities,  more  or  less  effective,  more  or  less  re- 
sisted and  ineffectual,  in  all  our  daily  commerce  with  other 
selves  and  other  things.  And  just  as  we  should  never  seek 
any  explanation  of  such  experiences  and  never  find  it  by 
weaving  together  judgments  in  trains  of  reasoning,  without 
intellectual  curiosity;  so  we  should  never  give  reality  and  life 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  117 

to  the  explanation  without  the  consciousness  of  an  activity 
belonging  to  the  nature  of  the  Self  as  a  will,  that  is  limited 
by  other  self-active  wills. 

Physicists  and  psychologists  both  know  perfectly  well  what 
men  really  mean  when  they  naively  and  without  prejudice  talk 
of  causes  and  effects.  All  men  think  of  things  as,  each  one, 
doing  something  to  some  other,  and  as  having  something  done 
to  them.  Less  popularly  expressed,  everybody  believes,  and 
must  believe,  that  both  things  and  selves  are  real;  that  both 
things  and  selves  are,  in  varying  degrees,  both  active  and 
passive;  and  that  both  have  the  forms  and  precise  terms  of 
their  activity  and  passivity,  conditioned  in  a  limited  way  upon 
the  activity  and  passivity  of  other  selves  and  things.  The 
"  laws "  which  science  discovers  and  announces  are  nothing 
but  the  known  or  conjectured,  more  or  less  uniform,  modes 
of  the  behavior  of  selves  and  things  in  their  changing  rela- 
tions to  one  another.  All  this  is,  of  course,  anthropomorphic; 
if  by  being  anthropomorphic  we  mean  knowing  realities, 
or  thinking  about  them,  as  only  man  can  know  and  think 
about  anything  at  all.  Nor  is  it  simply  anthropomorphic,  as 
a  purely  intellectual  human  form  of  knowing  and  thinking; 
it  is  also  anthropopathic.  It  is  explanation  made  blood-warm 
and  effective  with  feeling,  often  rising  to  the  intensity  of  pas- 
sionate effort  and  passionate  suffering.  But  such  factors  de- 
rived from  the  experiences  of  a  feeling  and  voluntary  Self 
are  as  necessary  to  knowing  what  we  men  really  are,  and 
what  the  world  of  our  environment  really  is,  as  are  the  ratio- 
cinations of  that  mythical  "  pure  intellect,"  to  which  some 
would  bow  down  in  a  cold  and  unmeaning  act  of  worship. 
Any  attempt  in  the  name  of  science  to  purify  the  causal  con- 
ception of  the  elements  contributed  by  emotion  and  will  does 
not  in  the  least  help  science  to  clear  itself  of  the  charge  of 
either  anthropomorphism  or  anthropopathism.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  reduces  explanation  to  a  lifeless  body  of  abstractions 
and  empty  formulas  which  give  no  real  account  of  anything; 


118  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

— least  of  all,  of  the  reasoning  processes  from  which  the  ab- 
stractions and  formulas  come. 

What  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason  means,  then,  for 
man's  knowledge  of  the  real  world  is  this.  Its  Nature  is 
known,  and  every  being  and  event  in  It  is  known,  and  known 
only  in  terms  of  doing  and  suffering,  or  having  something 
done  to  it.  So  far  as  we  know  these  terms,  we  know  the  "  na- 
ture "  of  any  being,  or  the  "  causes  "  of  any  event.  Its  known 
or  conjectured  modes  of  behavior,  under  known  or  conjectured 
relations,  are  at  any  moment  in  the  growth  of  knowledge,  the 
practically  "  sufficient  reason "  with  which  to  satisfy  the  in- 
tellect's demand  for  explanation.  But  the  real  reason  is  never 
sufficient,  and  intellectual  curiosity  is  therefore  never  wholly 
quenched.  Quite  sufficient  reasons  are  known  to  God  alone; 
and  He  does  not  get  at  them  by  slow  and  doubtful  ratiocina- 
tive  processes,  or  other  human  means  of  calculation. 

The  fuller  meaning  of  this  instinctive  or  rationalized  meta- 
physics will  become  apparent  when  we  come  to  treat  in  subse- 
quent chapters  of  metaphysics  in  general,  and  of  the  Philos- 
ophy of  Nature  and  the  Philosophy  of  Man.  It  is  enough  at 
present  to  state  the  conclusion  which  must  be  incorporated 
into  our  theory  of  knowledge.  He  who  rejects  the  validity  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  real  world  of  selves  and  things,  which 
comes  to  him  only  on  these  terms,  rejects  the  validity  of  human 
knowledge  altogether.  And  the  absurdity  of  the  position  in 
which  the  intellect  thus  becomes  involved  will  soon  appear. 
Both  the  logical  principle  of  Identity  and  that  of  Sufficient 
Reason  show  man's  confidence  that  his  own  essential  being  as 
will,  and  his  own  experienced  relations  as  an  active  and  suffer- 
ing agent,  afford  the  type  according  to  which  he  may  rationally 
judge  the  essential  nature  and  real  relations  of  all  other  beings 
in  the  one  World.  Causality  itself  is  no  invincible  bond  that, 
as  it  were  from  the  outside,  seizes  hold  upon  things  and  forces 
them  into  a  kind  of  unity.  Neither  is  it  necessary  to  get 
beyond   our  daily  experience  in  order   to  realize   the   nature 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  119 

of  that  causal  nexus,  in  the  confidence  of  which  all  our  reason- 
ing about  things  continually  proceeds.  When  analyzed  and 
criticized,  this  nexus  appears  not  so  much  like  the  external 
and  merely  visible  connections  of  a  machine,  as  these  lay  them- 
selves bare  before  the  eye  of  sense.  It  is  the  rather  like  the 
interiorly  recognized  and  felt  connections  of  a  conscious  and 
purposeful  Self. 

Besides  those  logical  principles,  or  rules  of  the  behavior  of 
intellect  in  all  the  growth  of  knowledge,  which  have  already 
been  discussed,  there  are  certain  hidden  and  yet  more  funda- 
mental presuppositions,  or  implicates.  What  does  any  man  take 
for  granted,  whenever  he  claims  to  know,  or  know  the  truth 
about,  himself,  or  other  selves,  or  other  things?  When  ques- 
tioned in  this  way,  the  answer  should  doubtless  be :  It  is  taken 
for  granted  that  there  is  some  evidence,  or  proof  for  that 
which  is  affirmed  to  be  known.  But  neither  question  nor 
answer  reach  down  deep  enough  to  serve  the  present  purpose. 
How  uncertain,  rambling,  and  constantly  changing,  are 
human  ideas  as  to  what  is  evidence  and  proof!  The  "suffi- 
cient "  of  to-day,  is  insufficient  to-morrow.  The  accepted 
science  of  one  age  is  the  resisted  superstition  of  another. 
There  are  accepted  facts  of  physics  at  the  present  hour,  the 
bare  announcement  of  which  a  few  decades  ago — for  example, 
electrons,  ions,  Eoentgen  and  X-rays,  etc. — would  ha.ve  gained 
for  anyone  the  title  of  lunatic  or  liar.  On  the  contrary,  there 
are  multitudes  of  commonly  accepted  judgments  of  the  past 
that  would  have  hard  work  indeed  even  to  gain  a  hearing  for 
their  alleged  proofs  at  the  present  time.  And  in  all  ages,  they 
who  will  not  listen  to  Moses  and  the  Prophets  will  not  be- 
lieve though  one  should  rise  from  the  dead  to  assure  them. 
All  this  is  rebuke  to  dogmatism,  food  for  scepticism,  urgent 
call  for  criticism.  But  it  has  absolutely  no  influence  upon 
those  assumptions  which  are  made  alike  by  dogmatist,  sceptic, 
and  critic;  or  upon  those  implicates  in  which  all  three  of  these 
attitudes    toward    evidence    find    themselves    inextricably    in- 


120  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

volved.  For  this  kind  of  presuppositions  underlies  doubt  and 
negation,  as  truly  and  as  surely  as  it  affords  foundations  for 
believing  and  affirming. 

Since  the  presuppositions  of  this  character  exist,  for  the 
most  part,  in  the  form  of  beliefs,  and  since  all  such  beliefs 
are  chiefly  matters  of  feeling,  they  are  not  brought  into  clear 
consciousness  by  all  our  ordinary  acts  of  knowing;  neither  is 
their  significance  clearly  reflected  from  the  customary  proced- 
ure of  the  sciences  in  their  attempts  at  the  growth  of  human 
knowledge.  Philosophy  can  do  little  more  with  them  than 
just  to  mention  them.  For  that  manner  of  reflective  thinking 
which  calls  itself  philosophy,  even  in  its  most  sceptical  or 
agnostic  form,  is  as  dependent  upon  the  validity  of  these  as- 
sumptions as  is  the  most  abundantly  certified  form  of  either 
ordinary  or  scientific  knowledge. 

The  attempt  to  state  precisely  what  are  these  invincible  be- 
liefs, these  unquestioned  implicates,  of  all  human  knowledge,  is 
accompanied  by  peculiar  difficulties.  To  a  certain  extent,  all 
thinkers  must  be  the  advocates  of  a  so-called  "  faith-philos- 
ophy." Eeasoning  about  reasoning  itself  comes  to  an  end 
somewhere.  Proof  that  proof  is  possible,  or — much  more — 
that  proof  is  impossible,  takes  for  granted  what  cannot  be 
proved.  Any  strict  and  mutually  exclusive  separation  between 
faith  and  knowledge,  even  in  the  form  in  which  it  was  at- 
tempted by  the  Kantian  criticism,  must  somewhere  base  itself 
upon  foundations  where  both  faith  and  knowledge  are  ele- 
ments lying  together  in  a  kind  of  reinforced  cement.  Yet  we 
are  not  unmindful  of  the  sarcasm  which  made  Schopenhauer 
speak  of  Jacobi,  the  champion  of  a  "  faith-philosophy,"  as  one 
"  who  only  has  the  trifling  weakness  that  he  takes  all  he  learned 
and  approved  before  his  fifteenth  year  for  inborn  ideas  of  the 
human  mind."  We  are  even  the  more  warned  against  this 
"  trifling  weakness  "  by  the  fact  that  the  physical  sciences  are 
now  setting  up  some  of  their  most  recent,  and  as  yet  even 
doubtful  discoveries,  as  a  priori  truths,  "  innate  ideas  "  inevi- 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  121 

tably  attaching  to  "  Nature"  (when  writ  large  with  a  capital) 
by  every  sane  and  rational  mind.  Let  us  be  modest  and 
cautious,  then,  in  the  attempt  to  discover  those  primary  be- 
liefs which  underlie,  and  interpenetrate,  and  both  limit  and 
guarantee,  all  the  growth  of  human  knowledge. 

And,  first,  there  exists  a  certain  wonderful  amd  almost 
audacious  confidence  of  human  reason  in  itself.  The  times  in 
which  this  confidence  has  been  misplaced,  and  its  rights  re- 
futed, are  already  infinite  in  number.  Common  folk  are  al- 
w^ays  going  wrong, — and  not  least  of  all  in  respect  to  their 
judgments  about  things  where  they  think  their  knowledge  is 
most  trustworthy  and  complete.  Even  the  particular  sciences 
advance  chiefly  through  correcting  their  past  errors  and  inac- 
curacies. While  in  respect  of  those  most  important  truths  of 
ethics,  aesthetics,  and  religion,  by  which  men  live  and  die 
most  worthily,  it  often  seems  as  though  the  entire  history  of 
the  human  race  were  one  long  record  of  misconceptions,  blun- 
ders, whims,  and  injurious  mistakes.  Yet  as  often  as  human 
reason  is  confounded,  and  stumbles,  and  falls,  she  never  lies 
prone  and  despairing.  She  always  rises  to  her  feet,  and  goes 
on  her  way  with  renewed  determination ;  and  generally  with 
renewed  confidence  as  well.  With  the  maturing  of  experience 
— an  experience  so  largely  of  failure  and  mistake — she  has  a 
yet  greater,  though  chastened,  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a 
triumphant  result.  In  the  individual  and  in  the  race,  cre- 
dulity may  decrease  while  wisdom  grows.  But  what  is  most 
important  is  this :  the  conditions,  limits,  tests,  and  guaranties 
of  knowledge  become  better  known  through  the  very  failures 
themselves.  And  this  kind  of  knowledge  is  the  best  endorse- 
ment of  the  faith  of  reason  in  itself.  To  say  that  the  mature 
mind  does  not  any  more  surely  know,  and  widely  know,  than 
the  mind  of  the  child,  is  to  speak  foolishly.  To  say  that 
the  race,  as  represented  by  the  most  highly  developed  centers 
of  scientific,  artistic,  and  moral  culture,  knows  no  more  about 
the  world  of  men  and  of  things,  than  did  the  more  primitive 


122  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

men  of  thousands  of  years  gone  by,  is  to  speak  even  more 
foolishly.  Nor  can  we  limit  this  growth  of  knowledge  te 
sensible  matters  alone.  Thus  the  experiences  of  history  con- 
firm and  strengthen  that  confidence  of  reason  which,  in  the 
form  of  an  innate  belief,  belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  man's 
cognitive  powers. 

This  presupposition  of  all  knowledge,  in  the  form  of  belief, 
is  not,  however,  a  purely  subjective  affair.  It  docs  not  ap- 
pear in  the  character  of  an  illusion;  it  is  not  like  the  belief  in 
fairies  or  ghosts.  It  includes  presuppositions  which  have  an 
irresistible  reference  to  the  character  of  the  object  of  knowl- 
edge; it  is  fraught  with  ontological  implicates.  The  knower 
believes  in  the  actuality  of  the  event  which  he  knows,  in  the 
reality  of  the  object  of  his  cognition.  This  belief  is  immediate 
and  irresistible.  Its  truthfulness  is  the  presupposition,  the 
implicate  of  a  reality,  which  is  essential  to  the  very  nature  of 
knowledge.  Some  actual  happening,  either  within  myself  or 
to  myself,  as  caused  by  something,  or  between  some  things  or 
selves  other  than  me,  is  presupposed  in  all  knowledge.  Some 
real  being — if  not  myself  alone,  then  also  some  other  selves, 
or  other  things — is  implied  in  the  objective  reference  of  all 
knowledge.  I  may  sense  the  event  imperfectly,  and  describe 
it  inaccurately;  but  something  happens  in  reality  to  some  real 
being,  every  time  an  act  of  knowing  takes  place  in  my  con-* 
sciousness.  Call  it  for  the  present  X,  an  unknown  quantity, 
if  you  will.  It  belongs  to  science  and  philosophy  to  explicate 
this  X.  But  the  belief  in  X  is  an  ever-present,  however  silent, 
presupposition  of  all  human  knowledge. 

It  is  plain,  then,  that  when  any  critical  theory  of  knowledge 
pretends  to  have  told  the  whole  truth  of  the  experience  of 
knowledge  by  saying,  "  All  objective  cognition  has  its  source 
in  our  mental  representations,"  or  again :  "  All  objective  cog- 
nition consists  of  our  mental  representations," — it  may  prove 
false,  in  an  important  way,  to  the  fundamental  and  invincible 
faith  of  reason.     This  faith  rejects  the  analysis  which  resolves 


PRINCIPLES  AND  PRESUPPOSITIONS  123 

the  presence  of  X  into  a  mere  mental  image,  or  into  an  ab- 
straction, or  into  a  dialectical  process  striking  against  a  limit, 
like  the  nose  of  a  blind  fish  running  itself  against  the  bank  in 
a  pool  of  muddy  water.  This  invincible  faith  of  reason,  on 
the  contrary,  recognizes  a  reality,  of  the  Self  and  of  that 
which  is  not-Self,  in  that  experience  which  is  given,  when- 
ever the  life  of  consciousness  takes  the  form  of  a  completed 
act  of  knowledge. 

Objections  may  indeed  be  raised  against  speaking  of  the 
form  which  the  ontological  implicate  of  all  knowledge  takes,  as 
a  "  belief  " ;  and  if  by  the  word  "  belief  "  we  mean  any  mental 
attitude  resembling  that  with  which  he  holds  to  certain  opin- 
ions, about  the  truth  of  which  he  is  doubtful  for  lack  of  evi- 
dence, the  word  is  not  fitly  employed  with  reference  to  man's 
confidence  in  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  his  knowledge. 
Psychologists  have  long  differed  as  to  what  term  should  be 
employed  to  represent  the  nature  of  this  confidence  and  the  way 
in  which  it  is  derived.  Of  all  these  theories,  that  is  most  repre- 
hensible and  promptly  to  be  rejected  which  would  convert  the 
faith  into  a  sort  of  inference,  based  upon  the  mediation  of  an 
idea.  According  to  this  theory,  the  intellect  argues  its  way  to 
reality  as  something,  so  to  speak,  back  of  the  screen  on  which 
the  ideas  are  thrown  by  a  camera  of  unknown  construction 
situated  back  of  another  screen.  Upon  this  view,  that  of 
Schopenhauer  is  a  manifest  improvement.  According  to  Scho- 
penhauer, the  intellect  proceeds  upon  the  a  priori  principle  of 
sufficient  reason  to  a  kind  of  envisagement,  or  seizure,  of  the 
concrete  reality  in  the  act  of  perception.  But  this  philosopher 
then  proceeds  so  to  expound  the  whole  work  of  intellect  as 
illusory  with  regard  to  the  nature  of  reality,  as  to  undermine 
his  own  position.  Other  modern  psychologists  have  done  bet- 
ter; they  have  agreed  rather  with  the  thought  of  Augustine, 
the  early  Church  Fathers,  and  the  ecclesiastical  writers  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  In  their  view,  the  ontological  implicate  of  all 
knowledge  is  an  act  of  faith,  or  rational  belief.     If,  however. 


124  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

we  use  this  term,  we  must  not  think  of  knowledge  as  made  up 
of  separate  elements,  some  of  which  can  be  abstracted  and  yet 
leave  the  essential  nature  of  knowledge  unchanged.  In  the 
growth  of  knowledge,  inference  proceeds  with  reason's  faith 
in  itself  and  also  with  its  faith  in  the  reality  of  the  object  of 
knowledge;  but  the  faith  is  never  a  matter  of  blind  feeling, 
any  more  than  it  is  a  matter  of  pure  inference  from  sensuous 
impressions.  The  very  essence  of  knowledge,  in  its  existence 
and  in  its  growth,  requires  the  exercise,  in  a  living  unity,  of 
all  the  so-called  faculties  of  the  knowing  Self.  Or,  to  invert  the 
statement  and  make  it  more  technical :  The  entire  complex 
condition  of  the  Self,  in  the  act  of  cognition,  involves  and 
guarantees  the  reality  of  the  Self's  object  of  cognition. 

One  other  important  truth  emerges  clear  and  consistent 
from  an  analysis  of  the  principles  and  presuppositions  of  all 
knowledge.  All  communication  of  facts  of  experience  from  one 
mind  to  another,  all  that  imparting  of  the  information  and 
discoveries  about  things  and  selves,  in  w.hich  the  growth  of 
science  consists,  implies  an  ontological  conviction  which  is  com- 
mon to  the  race.  Other  selves  have  experiences,  and  reason 
from  these  experiences  to  general  truths  about  nature  and  man, 
in  the  undoubted  belief  that  the  active,  living  logic  of  human 
thought  is  adequate  to  the  true  representation  of  the  reality 
of  things.  For  science  is  not  your  individual  opinion,  or  mine, 
or  that  of  any  other  individual.  In  its  most  assured  form  it 
consists  of  those  organized  and  systematized  judgments  which 
best  represent  the  experience  of  the  race.  And  the  underlying 
presupposition,  the  ontological  implication,  which  makes  this 
racial  growth  of  knowledge  possible,  is  a  world  of  selves  and 
things,  extra-mentaWy  correspondent  to  the  thoughts  about 
these  selves  and  things,  which  have  somehow  become  accepted 
by  the  race. 


CHArTER  VII 

SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM 

The  three  words  which  form  the  heading  of  this  chapter 
indicate  attitudes  of  mind  which  must  at  different  times  char- 
acterize the  growth  of  knowledge  in  every  individual  and  in 
the  entire  race.  It  is  true  that  there  are  persons,  who,  either 
from  temperament,  or  from  the  effects  of  education,  or  both, 
are  more  sceptically  inclined  than  are  the  majority  of  their 
fellows.  Oftener  than  otherwise  this  inclination  is  especially 
emphatic  as  a  reaction  or  recoil  from  some  extreme  of  dogmat- 
ism. Thus  at  the  same  time,  and  in  the  same  community, 
pronounced  dogmatists  and  pronounced  sceptics  are  likely  to  be 
living  side  by  side.  There  are  epochs  in  human  development 
when,  especially  in  the  field  of  moral  and  religious  conceptions 
and  truths,  an  unusual  proportion  of  avowed  agnostics  are  to 
be  found.  And  yet,  we  repeat,  every  man  must  be  at  all  times 
dogmatic  in  making  some  Judgments,  sceptical  about  others, 
and  agnostic  with  reference  to  most  of  the  opinions  whicli 
constitute  his  daily  mental  environment.  Euin  would  quickly 
follow  for  any  man  who  attempted  to  be  either  an  unques- 
tioning dogmatist,  a  thorough-going  sceptic,  or  an  invincible 
agnostic,  at  all  times,  and  toward  every  alleged  fact,  generaliza- 
tion, or  law,  belonging  to  the  organized  body  of  human  knowl- 
edge. 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  for  the  student  of  psychology,  or 
indeed  for  any  person  of  intelligence  and  common-sense,  to 
prove  at  length  how  man's  knowledge  grows  in  dependence  upon 
doubt  and  upon  the  further  inquiry  which  doubt  suggests  and 
commands.  The  demand  for  doubt  exists,  not  only  in  the  in- 
terests of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  but  also  in  the  interest 
of  obtaining  the  good  things  of  life,  and  even    of  preserving 

lf5 


126  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

life  itself.  The  infant  who  does  not  early  learn  to  be  sceptical 
as  to  whether  things  really  are,  what  at  first  they  seem  to 
be,  is  doomed  to  a  wretched  and  unsuccessful  life.  He  is,  and 
without  the  awakening  shock  of  doubt,  he  remains,  an  idiot. 
Intellectual  curiosity,  the  spirit  and  the  practice  of  tlie  hunt 
for  truth  that  has  practical  results,  as  well  as  for  the  truths 
of  science,  go  hand  in  hand  with  doubt.  Indeed,  as  to  the  part 
which  scepticism  plays  in  the  development  of  the  particular 
sciences,  we  may  say  that  distrust  of  the  first  and  more 
obvious  testimony  of  the  senses,  and  doubt  as  to  what  are  the 
real  facts  underlying  the  illusion  and  affording  its  explana- 
tion, are  absolutely  indispensable  to  the  first  steps  in  this  de- 
velopment. Thus  psychology,  psycho-physics,  and  physics,  all 
unite  in  attacking  the  common-sense  view  of  the  testimony  of 
the  senses  as  to  what  things  really  are.  And  the  realities  with 
which  they,  by  processes  of  criticism,  underlay  and  explain 
these  illusions  of  sense,  are  products  of  an  imagination  so 
subtle,  refined,  and  difficult,  for  the  ordinary  and  even  for  the 
trained  scientific  mind,  that  the  conclusions  reached,  however 
dogmatically  affirmed,  may  have  to  remain  subjects  of  a  scep- 
ticism more  thorough  than  that  with  which  the  processes  be- 
gan. But  knowledge  grows  in  this  way;  and  knowledge  can 
grow  in  no  other  way. 

"It  is  man's  privilege  to  doubt:  " 

But  only 

"  If   so  be  that  from   doubt  at  length. 
Truth  may  stand  forth   unmoved  of  change." 

This  legitimate  and  indispensable  scepticism  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking  has  its  rightful  issue  in  a  process  of  criti- 
cism. If  it  may  be  called  man's  privilege  to  doubt,  it  must 
be  called  man's  duty  to  criticize.  To  criticize  is  but  to  use 
one's  judgment;  and  to  criticize,  most  originally  and  signifi- 
cantly, means  to  inquire,  to  search  into  and  to  distinguish  be- 
tween good  and  bad   {xpivw^  I  judge).     Without  the  ceaseless 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      127 

and  strenuous  use  of  critical  judgment,  knowledge  cannot  grow; 
without  distinguishing  between  good  and  bad,  from  the  evi- 
'dential  point  of  view,  convictions  as  to  truth  and  reality  can- 
not be  reasonably  sustained.  Thus,  there  is  profound  philo- 
sophical truth  in  calling  the  man  who  does  not  use  Judgment 
in  practical  matters,  lacking  in  "  common  "  sense ;  he  is  defi- 
cient in  that  kind  of  critical  faculty  which  obligates  a  man  to 
distinguish  between  the  good  and  the  bad,  the  well  adapted 
and  the  unfit  for  the  uses  of  his  daily  life.  So,  also,  he  who 
lacks  critical  judgment  in  matters  of  science,  art,  morals,  or 
religion,  is  said  to  have  no  "  sense  "  about  such  matters — no 
such  sense  as  is  rightly  expected  of  a  man.  To  utter  quite 
completely  uncritical  judgments  about  anything  is  to  "talk 
nonsense."  He  who  is  not  a  critic,  in  respect  of  all  the  more 
important  judgments  for  living  well,  or  for  success  in  his 
particular  pursuit  or  profession,  is  less  than  a  man  ought  to 
become. 

Of  course,  however,  since  different  judgments  are  supported 
by  immensely  different  amounts,  and  widely  differing  kinds, 
of  evidence;  and  since  the  evidence  on  which  many  judgments 
must  be  made  up  is  very  frequently  confused  and  not  rarely 
conflicting;  agnosticism,  or  an  avowal  of  inability  to  pro- 
nounce a  cognitive  judgment,  is  the  inevitable  and  rational 
result.  If  he  who  has  none  of  those  affirmative  judgments 
which  constitute  a  fairly  compact  body  of  accepted  truths,  is 
a  fool  for  lack  of  judgment;  he  who  is  not  agnostic  about  in- 
numerable matters  is  a  fool  for  rashness  of  judgment.  On  the 
vast  majority  of  alleged  truths  which  concern  the  conduct  of 
our  daily  lives,  or  the  interests  of  science,  art,  morals,  and  re- 
ligion, the  agnostic  judgment  is  the  only  true  judgment.  And 
he  who  refuses  to  say,  "  I  do  not  know  "  is  convicted  of  being 
either  self-deceived  or  a  liar. 

All  the  foregoing  statements,  however  valid  from  the  point 
of  view  of  logic  and  of  the  practical  life,  do  not  solve  the  prob- 
lems which  arise  in  the  very  midst  of  a  philosophical  theory 


128  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  knowledge  and  which  attach  themselves  to  such  terms  as 
philosophical  criticism,  scepticism,  and  agnosticism.  This 
theory  proposes  to  itself  two  important  questions  with  regard 
to  all  these  attitudes  of  mind  toward  truth.  The  first  is  this: 
"What  are  the  limits,  if  any,  to  the  sceptical,  critical,  and 
agnostic  judgments?  And,  second:  Which  of  these  attitudes, 
if  either,  must  be  held  toward  the  principles  and  presupposi- 
tions of  all  knowledge  ?  " 

With  regard  to  the  limits  of  scepticism,  they  may  be  reached 
in  either  one  of  several  different  ways.  In  many  cases  they 
are  reached,  whether  with  a  complete  logical  satisfaction,  or 
not,  through  the  pressure  of  practical  interests  and  of 
practical  necessities.  All  life  may  be  conceived  of  as 
consisting  in  an  endless  series  of  problems.  These  are  pri- 
marily such  as.  What  to  eat;  What  to  drink;  What  to  wear; 
How  to  get  where  I  want  to  go;  How  to  obtain  what  I  want 
to  use  or  to  enjoy.  With  regard  to  the  solution  of  most  of 
the  problems  of  this  class,  it  is  not  argument  that  supplies  the 
explanation.  About  them,  if  we  say,  "  In  the  beginning  was 
the  thought,"  and  then  study  "  this  first  line's  lesson,"  and 
ask  ourselves :  "  Is  it  the  thought  does  all  from  time's  first 
hour  ?  "  our  answer  at  once  must  be : 

"  I  dare  to  read, 
And  write:    '  In  the  beginning  was  the  deed.' " 

Small  boys  cannot  be  forever  sceptical  as  to  which  dogs 
will  bite,  which  bright  things  will  burn,  what  other  boys  it  is 
safe  to  challenge  to  combat.  Can  I  walk  ?  It  is  doubtful ;  but 
I  solve  the  problem  by  walking — or  I  discover  I  have  motor 
paralysis.  Can  I  succeed  in  this  business?  It  is,  indeed, 
doubtful.  But  I  must  do  something;  and  I  try  and  succeed, 
or  the  effort  is  followed  by  a  lamentable  failure.  Thus  in  the 
conduct  of  the  entire  life,  the  mental  condition  of  doubt  which 
either  does  precede,  or  which  might  rea.sonably  precede,  the 
concrete  act,  is  limited,  not  by  the  argumentative  solution  of 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM     129 

the  doubt,  but  by  the  results  of  experience.  In  a  word,  the 
doubt  for  lack  of  evidence  as  to  what  will  be,  is  banished  by 
the  experiment  which  converts  it  into  a  memory  of  what  has 
been.  Were  not  this  kind  of  pressure  brought  constantly  to 
bear  upon  us  all,  and  were  we  allowed  the  right  to  a  "  sufficient 
reason  "  for  all  our  deeds  before  we  entered  upon  the  experi- 
ment of  the  deeds  themselves,  we  should  be  most  of  the  time 
like  the  ass  of  Buridanus,  starving  to  death  between  the  two 
equally  attractive  bundles  of  hay.  The  necessity  of  living  by 
action  is  an  imperative  guardian  over  the  limits  of  scepticism. 
But  experience  has  also  set  certain  limits  to  scepticism  by 
the  abundance  of  practical  rules  and  groups  of  more  or  less 
consciously  interconnected  and  dependent  judgments  which  it 
has  furnished  on  grounds  of  evidence  long  since  accepted  as 
sufficient.  We  know  that  things  do  work  in  certain  ways.  If 
the  average  man  is  asked  how  he  knows  it;  and  hiows  it  so 
well  as  habitually  to  stake  life  and  life's  interests  upon  the 
knowledge,  he  may  be  puzzled  for  the  answer.  Sceptic,  he 
certainly  is  not,  with  reference  to  these  items  of  knowledge. 
But  neither  is  he  dogmatical  because  he  has  been  sufficiently 
critical  of  them  and  therefore  knows  well  their  grounds.  If, 
then,  he  is  pressed  for  a  "  sufficient  reason "  with  which  to 
certify  his  cognitive  judgment,  he  may  begin  a  vague  appeal 
to  his  conception  of  nature;  or  he  may  quote  authority;  or  he 
may  summon  to  his  help  a  certain  amount  of  generalized  ex- 
perience of  his  own.  And  if  he  is  further  asked,  whether  he 
surely  knows  anything  about  the  future,  whether  in  fact 
there  can  be  such  an  experience  for  the  human  mind  as  knowl- 
edge of  the  future,  he  will  probably  be  trapped  into  saying, 
"No."  He  may  thereupon  be  reminded  that  there  is  no 
absolutely  sure  knowledge  about  either  the  past,  or  even  the 
present,  beyond  the  immediate  consciousness  of  myself — 
whether  for  the  moment,  dogmatist,  sceptic,  critic,  or  agnos- 
tic, it  matters  not.  The  logical  result  of  which  is  that  into 
the  bottomless  pit  of  such  scepticism  falls  all  human  science, 


130  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  all  the  results  of  the  countless  centuries  of  the  experience 
of  the  race.  In  view  of  so  serious  a  consequence  of  carrying 
scepticism  to  its  logical  conclusions,  any  sceptic  may  find  a 
sufficient  reason  to  recover  a  sane  condition  of  mind.  He  will 
see  that  the  very  demands  for  evidence,  in  order  to  assert 
knowledge,  must  themselves  be  reasonable;  and  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  "  sufficient  reason,"  properly  interpreted,  is  a  valid 
limit  against  maintaining  the  sceptical  attitude  of  mind 
toward  many  of  our  judgments. 

If  now  we  ask  ourselves  how  much  and  what  kind  of  evi- 
dence is  necessary  in  each  case  to  supply  a  sufficient  reason 
for  changing  the  attitude  of  doubt  to  an  attitude  which  war- 
rants the  affirmation  of  knowledge,  no  general  answer  can 
be  given.  The  more  correct  answer  depends,  in  each  case,  upon 
a  number  of  conditions.  Of  these  conditions,  the  most  im- 
portant, perhaps,  concern  the  kind  of  judgment,  or  matter 
of  reasoning,  about  which  knowledge  is  sought.  For  the 
knowledge  which  the  physical  sciences  have  achieved,  the 
grounds  of  evidence  are  for  the  most  part  known  only  by  those 
familiar  with  the  scientific  methods  of  each.  The  result  in 
such  cases  is  the  fixing  of  the  limits  more  carefully  in  accord- 
ance with  the  evidence;  then  follows  the  accompanying  of 
each  cognitive  judgment  with  an  avowed  or  silent  feeling  of 
doubt  as  to  the  precise  degree  of  its  accuracy.  Thus  in  these 
sciences,  hypotheses  come  to  be  either  rejected  or  elevated  to 
the  rank  of  theories  and,  finally,  to  the  position  of  accepted 
laws.  But  the  reasons  for  the  laws  are  scarcely  ever  sufficiently 
understood  to  establish  a  claim  to  constitute  a  part  of  the 
body  of  scientific  knowledge,  properly  so-called.  Thus  the 
fact  and  law  of  gravitation  are  known ;  but  why  all  masses 
tend  to  move  toward  each  other  as  the  law  surely  affirms  that 
they  do,  is  a  subject  about  which  no  tenable  hypothesis  has 
yet  been  discovered.  The  expert  in  science  knows  also  that 
none  of  his  laws  can  be  affirmed  without  an  allowance,  so  to 
say,  for  a  certain  limit  to  their  accuracy.     They  are  true, — 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      131 

that  is,  they  correspond  to  the  reality;  hut  only  within  certain 
assignable  limits. 

With  regard  to  all  this  class  of  cognitive  judgments  the 
only  available  course  of  the  average  man  is  to  accept  tliem 
on  the  authority  of  the  consensus  of  experts;  and  thus  to  make 
them  a  part  of  that  equipment  of  knowledge  which  is  neces- 
sary for  the  more  successful  conduct  of  life,  as  well  as  for 
laying  claim  to  the  title,  "  well-informed,"  or  "  intelligent." 
If  he  will  know  as  nearly  as  possible  when  his  sun  will  rise 
and  set  to-morrow,  he  resorts  to  the  almanac  or  to  the  columns 
of  his  daily  paper.  If  the  minutes  given  by  his  authority  do 
not  precisely  correspond  with  the  evidence  of  his  watch,  he 
may  suspect  the  latter  of  being  incorrect.  Or  he  may  add 
further  to  his  knowledge  by  learning  that  a  fraction  of  a 
degree  east  or  west  of  the  parallel  for  which  the  record  was 
made,  is  "  bound  "  to  make  a  difference  between  his  private 
experience  and  the  scientific  record.  The  more  he  learns 
about  the  conditions  under  which  these  astronomical  estimates 
are  obtained,  about  the  degree  of  certainty  which  attaches  to 
them,  and  about  the  limits  within  which  errors  are  possible, 
the  more  nearly  does  his  knowledge  approach  that  of  the  man 
of  science.  With  regard  to  the  weather-wise  predictions  of  either 
almanac  or  newspaper,  experience  will  soon  teach  him  on  what 
different   foundations    of   knowledge   these   guesses   are  based. 

But  both  the  unscientific  man  and  the  man  of  science  may 
be  said  to  know  that  the  sun  will  rise  in  the  east  and  not  in 
the  west,  on  to-morrow's  morning; — the  latter,  however,  much 
more  surely  than  the  former,  because  he  also  knows  why  it  is 
compelled  to  rise  in  just  such  a  place  and  what  an  inconceiv- 
able upsetting  of  the  entire  universe  it  would  mean  to  have  a 
reversal  of  the  sun's  apparent  procedure  really  take  place. 
Indeed,  with  the  savage  or  primitive  man,  such  so-called  knowl- 
edge can  scarcely  be  called  more  than  expectation,  "  rubbed 
in"  by  accustomed  experience.  With  science,  however,  ^he 
knowledge  is  placed  on  grounds  which  afford  a  quite  sufficient 


132  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

reason,  since  they  involve  a  knowledge  of  the  entire  solar 
system,  and  of  considerable  parts  of  the  universe  beyond. 

Even  the  man  of  science,  however,  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
his  knowledge  thins  out,  so  to  say,  as  the  attempt  is  made  to 
stretch  it,  either  forward  or  backward,  over  the  infinite  exten- 
sions of  time  and  space.  Did  the  forces  which  physics  and 
chemistry  recognize  as  the  destroyers  and  rebuilders,  in  a  cease- 
less process  of  change,  of  the  material  world  as  known  ac- 
cording to  present  experience,  combine  to  work  in  subjection 
to  the  same  laws  of  action  and  reaction,  during  the  myriads 
of  centuries  gone  by?  Do  these  same  forces  exist  and  follow 
the  same  laws  in  infinite  spaces  that  are  as  yet  concealed 
wholly  from  human  observation,  and  may  be  quite  beyond  the 
powers  of  human  imagination?  In  answer  to  such  questions, 
science  cannot  return  an  affirmative  answer  with  the  same 
assurance  as  that  which  it  accords  to  the  body  of  its  accepted 
truths  touching  the  behavior  of  things  in  the  world  of  its 
compassable  experience.  There  is  not  a  single  thing,  or  force, 
or  law,  or  element,  known  to  the  physico-chemical  sciences 
which  has  the  "  hall-mark "  of  eternity  stamped  upon  it. 
However,  this  much  we  may  comfortably  and  confidently  say: 
The  more  that  science  grows,  the  more  docs  it  appear  that  all 
realities  somehow  hang  together  in  a  rational  unity,  irrespect- 
ive of  the  limitations  of  time  and  of  space.  Stated  in  other  and 
somewhat  more  figurative  terms,  we  may  say :  The  Being  of 
the  World  is  more  and  more  known  as  a  self-limiting  and  law- 
abiding  Unity,  in  spite  of  the  changes  which  are  observed  to 
take  place  in  its  endless  times  and  its  limitless  spaces. 

About  many  things  in  the  physical  sciences,  however,  we 
find  the  experts  themselves  in  doubt;  or,  if  each  one  seems 
confident  of  the  truth  of  his  own  judgments,  there  is  no  con- 
sensus of  judgment,  on  the  authority  of  which  the  unlearned 
man  may  depend  for  his  knowledge.  About  such  matters, 
suspension  of  judgment — that  is,  agnosticism  in  the  more  ac- 
ceptable meaning  of  the  word — is  for  all  men  the  reasonable 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM     133 

attitude  of  mind.  Here  there  is  not  sufficient  evidence  for  a 
Judgment,  which  shall  have  even  enough  of  probability  to 
warrant  its  entrance  at  the  foot  of  that  ascending  scale  by 
which  we  test  the  ever-varying  degrees  of  what  we  call  our 
knowledge.  Here,  then,  is  a  case  where,  if  the  expert  is  more 
"  cock-sure "  than  the  outsider  feels  that  he  can  reasonably 
be,  it  is  the  expert  who  is  in  the  least  reasonable  and  trust- 
worthy attitude  of  the  two.  In  matters  of  mooted  truths 
within  the  domain  of  the  physico-chemical  sciences,  the  atti- 
tude of  trust  with  which  the  unscientific  man  approaches  the 
man  who,  somehow — but  not  always  by  any  means  fairly — 
has  attained  a  reputation  for  knowledge,  is  often  pathetic.  In 
all  such  cases  the  present  limits  of  doubt  are  set  in  the  fol- 
lowing ways:  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  there  is  conflicting 
evidence;  knowledge  of  what  the  evidence  on  both  sides  really 
is ;  knowledge  of  the  directions  in  which,  and  methods  by  which, 
experience  may  be  made  to  test,  and  to  corroborate  or  to  correct, 
the  conflicting  evidence;  and,  finally,  the  conviction  that  the 
reasonable  attitude  of  mind  is  one  of  further  inquiry,  and 
pending  such  successful  inquiry,  the  attitude  of  agnosticism. 
All  this,  under  the  circumstances,  is  the  most  valuable  form  of 
knowledge. 

In  all  those  cognitive  judgments  which  belong  to  another 
group  of  sciences,  such  as,  from  different  points  of  view,  are 
called  the  biological  and  psychological  sciences,  the  limits 
both  of  scepticism  and  of  knowledge  fall  under  somewhat 
different  rules  from  those  which  we  have  been  discussing.  Up 
to  the  present  hour,  these  sciences  remain  almost  purely  de- 
scriptive. They  can  recite  the  series  of  the  phenomena  which 
they  observe :  as  to  those  general  causes  which,  if  known,  would 
serve  as  more  or  less  sufficient  reasons  for  tlie  phenomena,  and 
for  the  character  of  the  series  in  which  they  occur,  these  sci- 
ences are  obliged,  for  the  most  part  to  remain  discreetly  silent ; 
or  to  indulge  themselves  in  hypotheses  which,  when  examined, 
are  found  to  soar  on  wings  of  fancy  into  regions  of  thin  air, 


134  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

rather  than  to  walk  steadily  and  erect  upon  a  firm  grounding  in 
all  the  observed  facts.  This  is  even  much  more  true  of  the 
strictly  so-called  biological  sciences  than  it  is  of  those  which 
are  more  clearly  entitled  to  the  cognomen  "  psychological," 
Indeed,  much  of  what  constitutes  the  science  of  so-called  biol- 
ogy is  really  applied  psychology.  For  within  certain  rather 
wide  limits,  experience  gives  us  in  a  relatively  immediate  and 
certain  way  the  true  and  satisfactory  explanation  of  the 
changes  in  our  own  inner  life;  these  reasons,  which  are  them- 
selves psychological,  we  may  then — although  here  the  limits 
of  safety  are  very  indefinite  and  difficult  to  fix — use  in  explana- 
tion of  the  observed  actions  of  the  lower  animals.  As  to  the 
fact  of  their  legitimate  application  in  general  to  the  human 
species,  we  have  the  highest  degree  of  certitude  next  to  that 
given  in  self-consciousness.  We  are,  indeed,  often  in  doubt 
as  to  the  precise  form  of  application.  But  there  is  nothing 
outside  of  my  Self  which  I  know  so  surely  and  can  explain  so 
fully,  by  reference  to  its  real  causes,  as  the  doings  of  the  other 
selves  who  belong  to  the  same  species,  I  Icnow  that  they  have 
feelings,  thoughts,  strivings,  and  conscious  volitions,  like  my 
own;  and.  that  in  these  experiences  of  theirs  must  be  found  the 
real  ground  for  the  experience  I  have  of  them.  That  my  own 
desires  and  volitions  explain  many  of  my  deeds,  I  am  sure; 
that  similar  desires  and  volitions  explain  the  deeds  of  other 
men,  I  am  almost  equally  sure;  that  somewhat  similar  internal 
processes  explain  the  behavior  of  my  horse  or  dog,  I  am  fairly 
— we  may  even  say — sufficiently  well  convinced  to  say  "I  know." 
But  what  explains  the  behavior  of  the  amoeba  when  it  seeks  its 
food,  of  the  phagocytic  corpuscle  when  it  finds  its  way  to  the 
destructive  bacteria,  of  the  spermatozoon  when  it  seeks  the 
ovum,  of  the  tendril  of  the  plant  when  it  seeks  support,  of  the 
root  when  it  reaches  out  for  nourishment  ? — and  so  on,  with  all 
the  thousands  of  similar  inquiries  which  the  descriptive  history 
of  biological  phenomena  incites.  About  the  psychological  an- 
swer to  such  inquiries,  which  has  at  different  times  commended . 


SCEPTICISM,   AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM     135 

itself,  and  then  lost  its  favor  among  the  professional  students 
of  biology,  we  may  still  remain  in  doubt.  But  deeper  by  far 
is  our  scepticism,  and  at  present  more  helpless  as  to  the  future, 
when  we  ask  the  physical  and  chemical  sciences  to  give  us,  in 
terms  strictly  their  own,  an  explanation  of  such  biological 
phenomena.  Therefore,  for  the  present,  we  continue  to  push 
back  the  limits  of  our  knowledge  of  life,  as  something  physical 
and  chemical,  by  making  more  accurate,  minute,  and  numer- 
ous, our  descriptive  histories  of  how  living  things  appear  to  us 
to  behave.  In  this  way  scepticism  retreats,  knowledge  advances, 
but  the  mystery  of  life  deepens,  the  limits  of  our  agnosticism 
widen,  curious  and  eager  inquiry  is  quickened ;  and  a  certain 
softening,  refining,  and  elevating  effect  upon  our  entire  mental 
attitude  toward  the  Being  of  the  World  is  happily  secured. 
All  this,  too,  is  knowledge;  but  it  is  knowledge  appropriately 
and  reasonably  kept  within  its  specific  limits. 

In  spite  of  the  truths  just  presented,  it  is  customary  with 
students  of  the  physical,  and  even  of  the  biological  sciences, 
to  remark — usually  with  distrust  and  not  infrequently  with 
scantily  concealed  scorn — upon  the  uncertainties  of  so-called 
psychological  science.  To  them,  material  things  and  physical 
events  appear  to  have  a  quite  superior  reality;  and  the  knowl- 
edge of  and  about  these  things  and  events  seems  to  have  an 
incontestable  validity,  which  cannot  be  approached  or  even  sim- 
ulated by  those  existences  we  call  "  souls,"  or  by  those  experi- 
ences of  these  souls  with  which  the  student  of  psychology  busies 
himself.  This  assumption  is,  indeed,  partly  justified;  but  it 
is  even  more  largely  due,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the  faults  and 
mistakes  of  psychologists,  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  ignorance 
and  prejudice  of  the  students  of  the  physical  sciences.  Doubt- 
less, physical  substances  can  be  observed,  analyzed,  and  manipu- 
lated, for  purposes  of  scientific  investigation,  as  souls  cannot. 
Equally  beyond  all  doubt  is  it  that  the  obvious  qualities  and 
relations  of  such  substances  are  more  stable  and,  as  it  were, 
open  to  common  observation  than  are  the  qualities  and  rela- 


136  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tions  of  the  sort  with  which  psychology  has  to  deal.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  only  through  these  very  evanescent  and  subtle 
changes  in  his  sense-impressions,  and  the  relations  established 
between  them  in  which  his  experience  consists,  that  man  knows 
anything  at  all  about  the  nature  and  modes  of  the  behavior 
of  physical  substances.  And  it  is  the  limits  of  human  capacity 
for  such  sense-impressions,  and  for  the  activities  of  human 
imagination  and  thought,  which  fix  both  the  limits  of  doubt 
and  the  limits  of  knowledge  for  the  natural  and  physical  sci- 
ences. But  psychological  science  deals  directly  with  these  sense- 
impressions,  imaginings,  and  thoughts — their  nature,  limits, 
and  the  grounds  for  trusting  or  doubting  their  deliverances. 
Within  the  limits  of  this  kind  of  knowledge — the  psychological 
— consciousness  probes  these  activities  and  relations  to  the  very 
bottom.  What  it  actually  is  to  see,  to  hear,  to  feel,  to  imagine, 
to  think — this  every  man  knows,  although  the  physical  condi- 
tions and  concomitants  of  these  experiences  afford  subjects  for 
difficult,  scientific  research.  This  general  fact  compels  the 
psychologist  in  his  turn  to  resort  for  help  to  tlie  physicist,  the 
chemist,  or  the  physiologist. 

When,  moreover,  we  come  to  inquire  more  curiously  into  the 
essential  nature  of  the  existences  with  which  we  are  dealing, 
the  answer  of  psychology  is,  of  all  the  sciences,  much  the  most 
clear.  For  to  speak  truly,  in  both  the  name  of  science  and  in 
the  name  of  common  sense,  the  nature  of  the  soul  is  essentially 
just  what  it  most  indubitably  and  clearly  knows  itself  to  be. 
But  here  is  where  too  much  of  modern  psychology  is  ready  to 
sacrifice  its  birth-right.  That  parts  of  the  brain,  or  of  the 
spinal  cord,  or  of  the  ganglia  of  the  thoracic  or  al)dominal 
cavities,  may  he  in  familiar  relations  with  a  consciousness  not 
our  own,  is  indeed  a  proposition  fraught  with  seemingly  in- 
solvable  mystery,  and  doomed  to  unabated  and  everlasting 
scepticism.  To  speak,  however,  of  a  "  subconscious  Self,"  or  of 
an  "  unconscious  Self,"  or  of  a  "  doubly  self-conscious  Self," 
is  to  couple  words  together  which  are  in  their  very  nature 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      137 

contradictory.  [Further  consideration  of  this  siil)ject  is  re- 
served for  another  cliapter.] 

The  limits  of  that  kind  of  knowledge  which  is  not  merely 
descriptive,  but  which  includes  either  a  demonstration  or  a 
more  or  less  convincing  collection  of  evidence  for  the  estab- 
lishing of  "  causes,"  have  been  greatly  extended  in  modern 
times  by  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  This  extension  of  knowl- 
edge, however,  has  not  restricted,  but  has  rather  enlarged, 
the  domain  of  scepticism.  The  complexity  of  the  known  phe- 
nomena needing  to  be  explained  has  grown  even  faster  than 
the  imagination,  based  upon  multiplied  observations  and  ex- 
periiuental  data,  has  been  able  to  supply  the  needed  explana- 
tions. In  a  word,  much  more  is  known  about  the  descriptive 
liistory  of  living  forms,  as  they  arc  distributed  and  interre- 
lated in  the  spaces  of  the  earth's  surface  and  the  times  of  the 
earth's  formation ;  but  there  is  still  needed  a  larger  number, 
or  a  more  intricate  complication,  than  has  yet  been  afforded  by 
the  scores  of  theories  that  claim  to  account  for  this  history. 
It  would  be  an  unworthy  perversion  of  the  facts  to  say  that 
the  race  is  not  gaining  an  increased  knowledge  of  the  mystery 
of  life.  But  scepticism  and  agnosticism  are  still  the  only 
reasonable  attitudes  of  mind  toward  the  majority  of  the  im- 
portant theories  of  evolution ;  and  the  "  reason  "  for  them  will 
probably  continue  quite  "  insufficient "  through  years,  and 
perhaps  centuries,  of  future  scientific  criticism. 

When  we  consider  the  reasonableness  of  the  attitudes  of 
mind  called,  respectively,  scepticism,  agnosticism,  and  criti- 
cism, toward  those  convictions  and  opinions  which  are  grouped 
under  such  titles  as  ethics,  aesthetics,  and  religion,  we  find  our- 
selves engaged  in  a  somewhat  markedly  different  field  of  inquiry. 
Here  it  has  been  customary  to  contend  that  man  must  bo 
content  with  faith  only,  and  can  never  hope  to  attain  to 
knowledge.  Indeed,  the  entire  course  and  outcome  of  the 
Kantian  criticism  is  largely  based  upon  this  distinction.  But 
Kant  himself  was  far  enough  from  intending  to  give  an  advant- 


138  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

age  to  scientific  knowledge  in  its  controversy  with  the  ethical 
and  religious  beliefs  of  mankind.  For,  in  his  critical  philos- 
ophy,— as  we  have  already  seen, — such  knowledge  is,  essentially 
considered,  only  the  intellect's  constitutional  way  of  arrang- 
ing the  phenomena  of  sense ;  and  the  island  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge, "  the  home  of  truth  "  about  phenomena,  is  surrounded 
by  the  impenetrable  ocean  of  the  unknown  Eeal.  By  a  faith, 
on  the  other  hand,  which  envisages  the  presence  and  the  mean- 
ing of  an  indubitable  moral  law,  we  are  convicted  of  the  prac- 
tical necessity  of  living  as  though  God,  Freedom,  and  Im- 
mortality, were  realities  independent  of  either  human  knowl- 
edge or  human  faith.  But  it  has  already  been  made  clear  that 
the  very  nature  of  human  cognitive  faculty,  and  of  its  opera- 
tion, is  such  as  to  render  false  and  misleading  any  such  com- 
plete distinction  between  faith  and  knowledge.  Knowledge 
itself  exists,  and  grows,  only  as  it  employs  scepticism  and  in- 
corporates faith;  and  a  certain  exercise  of  faith  is  one  funda- 
mental condition  of  the  validity  of  all  human  knowledge.  On 
the  otber  hand,  faith  that  is  not  based  on  knowledge,  or  is  en- 
tirely void  of  knowledge,  cannot  even  establish  itself  as  faith. 
An  attitude  of  "  pure  "  belief  toward  any  alleged  fact,  or  ut- 
tered truth,  would  be  absurd,  were  it  not  primarily  inconceiv- 
able. In  analyzing  the  conditions  and  grounds  of  any  cogni- 
tive act,  or  even  of  the  mental  attitude  of  scepticism  or  ag- 
nosticism, the  entire  case  may  be  stated  by  espousing  either  side 
of  the  controversy  over  the  primacy  of  faith  or  knowledge,  as 
it  has  raged  among  the  theologians.  I  believe  that  I  may 
know  (credo  ut  intelligam),  and  I  know  that  I  may  believe 
(inteUigo  ut  credam)  ; — both  positions  may  be  assumed  as 
equally  descriptive  of   the   actual   processes   of  mental   life. 

By  affirming  the  inseparableness  of  faith  and  knowledge 
it  is  not  meant,  however,  to  deny  the  marked  differences  in 
the  attitudes  of  mind  which  are  reasonable,  and  indeed  neces- 
sary, toward  moral  and  religious  truths  and  toward  the  truths 
of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences.     These  differences  have 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      139 

their  roots  in  differences  essential  to  the  different  classes  of 
man's  experiences.  The  data  of  sense-impressions  differ  from 
those  afforded  by  the  moral  and  religious  consciousness.  Not 
that  their  data  can  he  kept  apart;  or  that  the  interpretation 
given  to  them  by  the  moral  and  religious  nature  can  be  ex- 
plained without  reference  to  the  workings  of  intellect  and  feel- 
ing in  scientific  research  and  scientific  development.  For  the 
world  is  one,  in  some  sort,  from  whatever  different  point  of 
view  it  be  regarded;  and  the  human  soul  is  a  unity,  of  some 
sort,  whether  it  be  regarded  as  scientifically  inclined  and  en- 
gaged, or  as  inclined  to  duty  and  piety.  If  there  be  any  moral 
law,  or  moral  principle  having  the  right  to  command  human 
conduct,  it  must  have  its  seat  and  manifestation  in  this  real, 
one  world;  and  if  there  be  a  God,  such  as  the  highest  type  of 
the  religious  consciousness  recognizes,  this  repl  world  must 
be  God's  World.  Nor  does  it  require  an  impossible  amount  of 
research  to  discover  that  the  physical  sciences  are  themselves 
interpenetrated  and  profoundly  influenced  by  quasi-moral  and 
religious  feelings  and  conceptions;  while  ethics  and  religion 
are  chastened,  corrected,  confirmed,  and  illumined  by  the  dis- 
coveries of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  knowledge  in  matters  of  con- 
duct, art,  and  religion,  shares  the  essential  characteristics  of 
all  human  cognition,  certain  important  differences  cannot  fail 
to  be  recognized.  ]\Ian's  mental  attitudes  toward  the  alleged 
truths  of  ethics,  assthetics,  and  religion  are  normally  and 
necessarily  different  from  those  held  toward  the  truths  of  the 
natural  and  physical  sciences.  The  causes  of  this  difference 
are  chiefly  the  following  three.  And,  first,  a  large  body  of 
the  accepted  axioms  of  morality  and  religion — and  to  a  less 
extent,  of  artistic  matters — fall  under  the  influences  of  an  im- 
mediate and  imperative  call  to  action.  In  this  respect,  they 
are  like  those  cognitive  attitudes  toward  material  things  which 
men  are  compelled  to  assume  in  order  to  live  at  all.  It  is 
the    "  compulsion    of    the    deed,"    rather    than    of   the    ratio- 


140  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

cinative  processes  prolonged  in  any  intelligent  and  self-con- 
scious way,  which  makes  men  know  what  is  true,  because 
morally  right,  in  conduct,  or  satisfactory  in  matters  of  be- 
lief and  worship.  In  all  the  earlier  and  immature  intellec- 
tual life  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  the  apprehension 
and  criticism  of  reasons  that  may  afford  sufficient  logical 
support  to  their  cognitive  judgments  plays  as  little  part  in 
morals,  religion,  and  art,  as  it  does  in  all  the  unquestioned 
customs  of  eating,  drinking,  hunting,  fishing,  marrying,  be- 
getting children,  and  burying  the  dead.  That  is  to  say,  the 
conditions  of  tlie  environment,  and  the  most  immediate  satis- 
factions of  desire  and  will,  require  certain  mental  attitudes 
to  which  experience  contributes  most  of  that  kind  of  support 
which  converts  blind  and  instinctive  reactions  into  rational 
beliefs,  and  into  more  or  less  intellectually  reasonable  con- 
clusions. It  is  in  this  field,  and  in  this  field  alone,  that  the 
doctrine  of  philosophical  Pragmatism,  as  an  attempt  at  an 
epistemology,  affords  any  faintest  semblance  of  an  adequate 
solution  to  the  problem  of  knowledge. 

Second :  the  cognitive  judgment  in  matters  of  ethics,  aes- 
thetics, and  religion,  is  normally  and  necessarily  more  a  mat- 
ter of  feeling,  and  of  dependence  upon  the  satisfaction  of  the 
feelings,  than  is  the  case  with  cognitive  judgments  in  mat- 
ters of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences.  This  fact,  regarded 
as  a  cause,  is  universally  recognized  by  all  attempts  at  a 
psychological  analysis  of  such  judgments  in  the  two  classes 
of  cases.  The  fact  that  it  is  a  cause,  and  that  it  operates  so  ef- 
fectively as  a  cause,  is  one  of  the  principal  reasons  for  the  pres- 
ence of  so  much  agnosticism  in  religion  among  those  who  are 
pleased  to  call  themselves  too  exclusively  and  even  discourte- 
ously, "  men  of  science."  But  again,  we  must  insist  that  the 
influence  of  feeling  cannot  be  excluded  from  the  mind  in  form- 
ing the  most  coolly  scientific  judgments  about  matters  wholly 
indifferent  to  the  interests  of  morality,  art,  and  religion.  We 
have  just  said,  "wholly  indifferent";  but  in  fact  no  scientific 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      141 

truths  are  wliolhj  indifTcreiit  io,  or  alienated  from,  these  same 
emotional  influences  and  their  corresponding  interests.  Moral, 
ffisthetical,  and  even  quasi-religious  emotions  and  interests, 
interpenetrate  and  largely  influence  all  the  highest  concep- 
tions and  generalizations  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences. 
Any  depreciation  of  the  profounder  and  more  permanent 
forms  of  human  feeling,  with  respect  to  the  part  they  play 
in  the  formation  and  development  of  man's  knowledge  of 
the  Being  of  tlie  World,  of  the  truest  and  realest  of  realities, 
is  bad  psychology  and  leads,  both  in  science  and  religion,  to 
a  defective  philosophy.  The  feelings  are  not  simply  causes 
for  illusory  and  blind  beliefs  in  ethics,  art,  and  religion;  they 
are,  the  rather,  reasons  for  the  truth  of  these  beliefs.  If 
there  is  any  one  profound  and  important  principle  which  the 
biological  sciences  are  requiring  us  to  recognize  and  more  fully 
appreciate,  it  is  this :  Living  beings  find  their  way  to  the 
satisfactions  and  higher  developments  of  life  along  the  paths 
of  instinct  and  feeling  rather  than  of  conscious  ratiocinative 
processes. 

It  is  true  that  nature  demands  of  man  an  apprehension, 
and  an  ever-increasing  comprehension,  of  what  ends  he  should 
strive  after,  and  of  the  methods  by  which  those  ends  may  be 
reached.  This  demand  is  for  intellect  of  a  superior  capacity. 
By  somehow  attaining  this  intellect,  the  animal  has  become 
human.  By  using  and  cultivating  this  intellect  the  human 
being  developes  as  man.  But  it  is  also  no  less  true  that  the 
human  being  has  somehow  received  a  superior  outfit  of  so- 
called  instincts  and  feelings,  especially  in  the  form  which 
constitutes  the  basis  for  his  interest  in  science,  as  well  as 
in  morals,  art,  and  religion.  The  strivings  and  satisfaction 
of  these  feelings  contribute  largely  to  the  specific  qualities 
of  his  judgments  in  matters  of  morals,  art,  and  religion. 
Without  these  instinctive  strivings  and  the  satisfaction  of 
these  higher  forms  of  feeling,  man  would  be  as  little  human 
as  if  he  lacked  that  development  of  intellect  which  is  quite 


143  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

too  often  supposed  to  be  his  only  claim  to  superiority  over 
the  animals.  Judgments  toward  which  these  strivings  lead 
forward,  and  which  afford  satisfactions  to  them,  are  not  in- 
deed removed  wholly  from  the  conditions  which  satisfy  the 
"  principle  of  sufficient  reason."  But  we  have  seen  how  vague 
and  changeable  are  these  conditions.  And  when — as  one  is 
always,  in  one's  ultimate  consideration  of  the  problems  of 
knowledge,  forced  to  do — the  teleological  point  of  view  is 
assumed ;  then  it  is  seen  how  necessary  and  right,  even  from 
the  logical  standpoint,  it  is  to  regard  the  emotional  causes  of 
knowledge  in  the  fields  of  ethics,  art,  and  religion,  as  justify- 
ing reasons.  In  nothing  else  is  the  mind  obligated  to  be  more 
"  reasonable "  than  in  its  demand  for  a  "  sufficient  reason " 
to  justify  a  cognitive  judgment  of  an  ethical,  artistic,  or 
religious  character.  Unless  all  human  nature  has  gone 
wrong,  and  the  larger  Nature  which  encompasses  and 
compels  human  nature  is  deceiving  and  Self-deceived,  the  sat- 
isfactions in  the  form  of  judgments,  which  these  ethical,  ar- 
tistic, and  religious,  strivings  of  our  liuman  selves  require, 
must  be  admitted  into  the  field  of  a  knowledge  that  has  su-fji- 
cient  (or  reasonable)   reasons  in  its  justification. 

But,  in  the  third  place,  the  reasons  on  which  a  system,  or 
a  looser  collection,  of  cognitive  judgments  in  matters  of  morals, 
art,  and  religion,  is  to  be  built  up,  differ  essentially  in  some 
other  respects,  from  those  which  form  the  foundations  of  the 
physical  and  natural  sciences.  In  the  latter,  we  take  our  start 
from  sense-perceptions,  express  ourselves  chiefly  in  terms 
representative  of  sensuous  experiences,  and  return  for  the  test- 
ing of  our  judgments  to  the  facts  of  sense-experience.  Now, 
from  the  facts  and  truths  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences, 
neither  morals,  art,  nor  religion,  can  free  itself.  Neither 
ought  ever  to  wish  to  free  itself  from  these  facts  and  truths. 
But  there  are  other  facts  and  truths  which  can  neither  be 
envisaged,  nor  inferred,  nor  tested  in  the  same  way.  And  it 
is  largely  with  these  other  facts  and   truths  that  the  Judg- 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      143 

ments  of  a  moral,  aesthetical,  or  religious  character,  attempt 
to  deal.  Such  are  the  facts  of  what  the  "  old  psychology  "  used 
to  designate — and  with  commendable  proprietiy — an  "  inner 
experience."  All  experience  is,  in  its  very  nature,  "  inner  " ; 
and  it  is,  also,  always  dependent  upon  conditions  of  experience 
for  the  liuman  Self,  that  are  "  outward,"  or  "  outward-re- 
ferring." For  this  latter  reason  we  cannot  even  conceive  of 
morality,  art,  or  religion,  in  any  other  environment  than  in  a 
world  of  space  and  time  and  things.  Moral  conduct  is  of  a 
Self  toward  other  selves;  and  other  selves  are,  for  every  Self, 
only  a  certain  kind  of  things.  Art  can  have  no  formal  or  con- 
crete existence  without  ideals  of  beauty  being  incorporated  in 
things.  Eeligion  is  in,  and  of,  a  World  whose  Being  is  mani- 
fested in  things  and  in  selves,  and  as  apprehended  by  selves. 
It  is,  however,  still  true  that  the  original  and  impressive  data 
of  ethics,  aesthetics,  and  religion,  are  experiences,  not  of  sense- 
impressions,  but  of  self-conscious  states.  It  is  from  these  inner 
experiences,  regarded  as  needing  interpretation  and  justifica- 
tion in  the  World  of  Reality,  that  the  cognitive  judgments 
of  ethics,  aesthetics,  and  religion,  are  derived.  But  these  judg- 
ments may  be  more  or  less  logically  compacted  into  a  system 
to  be  defended  by  argument,  although  they  can  never  be  re- 
solved into  demonstrations  that  will  submit  themselves  to  test- 
ing by  the  methods  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences. 

From  this  description  of  the  nature  of  human  knowledge  in 
matters  of  morality,  art,  and  religion,  it  may  be  seen  how 
the  attitudes  of  scepticism,  criticism,  and  their  sequence  of  ag- 
nosticism, or  of  more  or  less  positive  knowledge  and  reasoned 
faith,  respectively,  apply.  In  them  all  the  private  experiences 
of  the  individual  are  insistent  and  determinative.  This  is 
inevitable;  for  temperament,  dominant  modes  of  feeling,  and 
early  instruction  or  the  efPects  of  the  habitual  social  environ- 
ment, are  the  more  powerful  causes  here.  The  data  of  experi- 
ence in  these  matters  are  more  exclusively  individualistic.  The 
attitudes  toward  the  possible  cognitive  judgments  are  more  mat- 


144  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ters  of  the  satisfaction  of  emotions,  strivings  of  will,  and  prac- 
tical interests.  But  for  philosophy  here  also,  as  truly — and 
even  in  some  respects  much  more  confidently — as  in  the 
fields  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences,  the  experience  of 
the  race  justifies  the  affirmation  of  a  certain  content  of  knowl- 
edge. Here,  too,  history  plainly  shows  a  development  of  knowl- 
edge as  already  reached  in  the  past,  and  encourages  the 
cheerful  and  constant  faith  in  a  future  yet  larger  develop- 
ment. 

From  a  somewhat  different  point  of  view  the  mind  is  now 
led  again  to  the  conclusion  which  was  reached  before  by  mak- 
ing an  analysis  of  the  meaning,  for  the  practical  purpose  of 
developing  human  knowledge,  of  the  principle  of  sufficient 
reason.  However  demonstration,  or  what  Kant  called  proof 
of  the  "apodeictic  "  sort,  may  be  made  to  apply  in  problems 
of  pure  mathematics  and  pure  logic,  man  can  never 
attain  any  such  incontrovertible  grounds  on  which  to  place  his 
cognitive  judgments  respecting  the  truths  of  the  great  world  of 
selves  and  of  things.  Indeed,  no  one  knows  one's  own  Self,  its 
true  nature  or  its  actual  past,  by  the  path  of  infallible  demon- 
stration. Self-consciousness,  like  sense-perception,  is  momen- 
tary and  incomplete;  memory  is  fallible,  and  so  is  inference. 
The  growing  body  of  knowledge,  both  for  the  individual  and 
for  the  race,  is  rather  like  a  living  organism,  in  which  the  more 
obvious  or  quite  secret  and  mysterious  processes  of  metabolism 
are  constantly  taking  place.  Some  parts  are  relatively  stable; 
some  are  momentarily  changing;  and  most  parts  lie  between  the 
two  extremes,  as  tested  by  their  stability  and  their  serviceable- 
ness.  That  which  can  be  appropriated  in  the  organism,  be- 
cause it  fits  its  essential  nature  and  its  practical  uses,  is  the 
true;  the  harmful  or  poisonous  or  unadaptable  elements  of 
half-truths,  falsehoods,  and  foolish  conceits,  are  constantly 
being  eliminated  by  the  vitality  and  metabolic  vigor  of  the 
organism. 

The  further  more  precise  definition  of  those  limits  of  seep- 


I 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      115 

ticism  and  agnosticism  which  we  are  now  discussing  belongs 
to  logic, — not  of  the  so-called  "  pure  "  or  a  priori  variety,  an 
exercise  whicli,  however  mentally  pleasing  and  invigorating, 
contributes  little  or  nothing  to  either  the  growth  or  the  de- 
fense of  truth, — l)ut  to  the  applied  logic  of  the  positive  sciences. 
Here,  each  science  must  have  due  regard,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
the  body  of  knowledge  which  it  can  claim  to  have  already 
established  by  proofs  satisfactory  enough  to  command  a  con- 
sensus of  intelligent  opinion,  and  on  the  other  hand,  to  the 
nature  of  the  subjects  with  which  it  deals  and  to  the  character 
and  amount  of  proof  which  it  is  reasonable  to  demand  for 
them.  Inasmuch  as  none  of  these  sciences  can  be  cultivated 
in  isolation  from  all  the  others,  but  on  the  contrary,  each  one 
of  them  is  likely  to  find  itself  in  need  of  something  from  all 
the  others ;  and  because  they  all  make  up  the  sum  of  that  which 
can  be  known  about  the  Being  and  the  Behavior  of  the  One 
World;  each  particular  science  must  grow  in  knowledge  of  its 
own,  by  attaining  harmony  with  the  others.  Thus,  just  as  the 
changing  limits  of  scepticism,  and  the  enlarging  areas  of  intel- 
ligent and  firm  conviction,  placed  on  grounds  of  sufficient  rea- 
son, are  adjusted  by  a  continuous  process  of  development  in 
the  experience  of  the  individual;  so  readjustment  and  improve- 
ment take  place  in  the  larger,  more  comprehensive,  and  truer, 
experience  of  the  race.  The  more  that  every  individual  mind 
opens  itself  with  candor  to  this  larger  and  truer  experience, 
the  greater  and  more  trustworthy  is  its  own  growth  in  knowl- 
edge. This  is  to  say  that  the  development  of  knowledge  is 
(1)  a  matter  of  degrees,  limitations,  and  changing  conditions; 
is  (2)  proved  only  with  a  larger  or  more  limited  degree  of 
probability;  because  it  is  (3)  constantly  being  tested,  and 
confirmed  or  modified,  by  the  growing  experience  of  the  race; 
and,  therefore,  (4)  the  truth  as  to  the  Being  of  the  World  is 
more  comprehensively,  definitively,  and  surely  known  through 
the  strivings  and 'achievements  in  history,  of  the  entire  com- 
munity of  self-conscious  and  rational  minds.     These  last  two 


146  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

considerations  bring  us  face  to  face  with  the  undoubtedly  telco- 
logical  and  social  character  of  human  knowledge,  and  of  the 
conditions  and  causes  of  its  development. 

But  Nature,  both  within  man  and  without,  has  arranged 
for  another  and  quite  insuperable  limit  to  the  sceptical  and 
agnostic  attitudes  of  mind.  For  tliese  attitudes  inevitably 
reach  a  limit  which  cannot  possilily  be  itself  transcended, 
but  which  indisputably  shows  that  every  act  of  knowledge  by  a 
self-conscious  Self  is  essentially  transcendent  of  that  Self. 
In  a  word,  the  very  attempt  to  invade  the  field  of  knowledge 
by  this  kind  of  scepticism,  with  a  view  to  establish  an  agnostic 
position,  of  necessity  defeats  itself.  Or,  to  state  the  case  in 
a  somewhat  enigmatical  way :  The  experience  of  every  in- 
dividual Self  includes  the  results  and  the  confidences  of  a 
universal  experience.  "  I " — the  individual  subject  of  the 
cognitive  act,  or  state  of  knowledge — transcend  the  "  me  "  in 
every  such  act  or  state,  that  has  reference  to  other  selves  or  to 
things.  And,  inasmuch  as  my  individual  experience  always 
implicates,  or  explicitly  involves,  such  a  reference;  this  indi- 
vidual experience  always  passes  beyond  the  individual  and 
singularly  limited  factors  of  the  experience,  into  the  universal 
and  the  incontestably  true.  If,  therefore,  by  philosophical  (or 
epistemological)  scepticism,  or  agnosticism,  be  meant  the  doubt 
and  the  denial  of  the  validity  of  the  principles  and  presup- 
positions of  knowledge,  in  their  applicability  to  the  reality  of 
things  and  of  selves;  then  such  scepticism  and  agnosticism  be- 
come simply  and  undeniably  absurd.  They  are  more  than  simply 
impossible :  they  are  intrinsically  absurd,  and  they  cannot  state 
themselves  for  purposes  of  argument,  whether  by  way  of  con- 
sent or  of  refutation ;  for  in  the  very  attempt  to  state  themselves 
their  own  refutation  is  inextricably  involved.  Thus  all  that 
is  properly  involved  in  the  Cartesian  point  of  starting  for  an 
incontestable  theory  of  knowledge,  is  equally  involved  in  the 
statement  of  the  positions  of  such  a  kind  of  epistemological 
scepticism  or  agnosticism.    To  say  duhito  (I  am  doubting),  or 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      147 

nescio  or  agnosco  (I  do  not  know)  implies  the  ergo  sum  (the 
postulate  of  my  existence)  as  necessarily  and  incontestably  as 
to  say  cogito  (I  am  thinking).  Self-conscious  doubt  and  self- 
conscious  ignorance  are  as  valid  and  indisputable  affirmations 
of  self-conscious  existence  as  can  possibly  be  made.  And  since 
even  to  state  these  sceptical  or  agnostic  attitudes — not  to  say, 
argue  them — implies  the  existence  of  other  selves  and  other 
things,  the  limit  which  the  fleeting  moment  and  singular  object 
of  self-consciousness  presents,  has  already  been  transcended. 
The  individual  has  exercised  his  warrant  for  assuming  his 
companionship  in  a  universal,  or  at  least  larger,  experience. 
His  reason  has  made  the  bow  of  allegiance  and  submission  to 
the  encompassing  and  controlling  Eeason,  in  which  the  former 
"  lives,  and  moves,  and  has  its  being."  And  now  if  the  ag- 
nostic, with  reference  to  the  fundamental  beliefs  and  reasoned 
conclusions  of  this  larger  experience,  avows  not  only  the  maxim 
"  I-do-not-now-know,"  but  also  "  You  do  not  know,"  and  "  No- 
body knows,  or  ever  will  know,  or  from  the  very  nature  of 
things  can  know  " ;  then  he  is  no  longer  agnostic,  but  has  be- 
come the  most  conceited  and  irrational  of  dogmatists.  He  has 
taken  the  liberty  to  transcend  his  own  particular  and  limited 
experience  in  order  to  deny  the  abstract  possibility  of  such 
an  act  of  transcending,  on  his  own  part,  and  on  the  part  of  all 
others.  But  how  does  he  even  dare  to  assume  that  there  are 
other  selves  with  whom  he  may  argue  the  case  by  an  appeal 
to  their  common  reason;  or  other  things  about  the  existence 
and  doings  of  which  the  argument  may  become,  as  it  were,  a 
valid  transaction? 

When  scepticism  has  once,  by  an  act  of  faith  in  reason,  over- 
leaped the  boundaries  of  epistemological  agnosticism,  it  is  con- 
fessedly difficult  to  tell  how  far  it  may  be  compelled  by  argu- 
ment to  go  in  its  concessions  to  the  possibility  of  a  valid  knowl- 
edge of  reality.  It  is  now  on  common  ground  with  the 
experience  of  the  race.  And  the  race  is  not,  and  never  can  be, 
agnostic  after  the  fashion  of  this  kind  of  agnosticism.     That 


148  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  growth  of  man's  knowledge  itself  constantly  compels  the  re- 
jection, or  modification,  of  much  of  the  dogmatism  of  man- 
kind, there  can  be  no  doubt.  The  truth  of  such  growth  is  a 
historical  fact.  The  fact  extends  itself  over  all  the  fields  of 
human  knowledge  and  opinion — the  scientific  as  well  as,  and 
perhaps  even  more  completely  than,  the  ethical,  artistic,  and 
religious.  It  certainly  would  seem,  however,  that  scepticism 
must  be  unavailable  with  regard  to  the  validity  of  those  con- 
stitutional forms  of  the  cognitive  faculties  which  of  necessity 
fix  the  limits  to  the  forms  of  the  qualities  and  relations  of 
reality  as  known  by  man,  and  which  both  Aristotle  and  Kant 
called  the  "  categories."  These  categories,  if  only  we  could 
discover  and  define  them,  would  have  to  remain  essentially  un- 
changed and  undisturbed  in  their  reign  over  the  kingdom  of 
truth  and  reality,  by  any  efforts  to  take  toward  them  the  ag- 
nostic position.  And,  in  fact,  we  find  that  their  unquestioned 
acceptance  is  at  least  a  practical  necessity.  But  as  has  just 
been  indicated,  both  logic  and  the  theory  of  knowledge  have 
from  the  first  found  it  difficult  to  agree  upon  the  origin,  num- 
ber, and  the  interpretation  of  the  so-called  categories.  Of 
late,  especially,  the  attempt  has  been  frequently  made  to  criti- 
cize the  categories  as  though  they  were  themselves  the  prod- 
ucts of  evolution.  However  interesting  such  speculation  may 
be  made,  and  not  only  interesting  but  seemingly  scientific,  it 
is  well  never  to  forget  the  limitations  under  which  all  specu- 
lation is  always  itself  placed.  The  theory  of  evolution  is,  of 
course,  only  an  hypothesis;  it  is,  the  rather,  a  grouping  of 
many  hypotheses  which  are  not  as  yet  thoroughly  assimilated 
and  harmonized.  So  far  as  these  hypotheses  deal  with  events 
before  human  knowledge  was,  they  are  obliged  to  frame  them- 
selves, in  terms  only  of  human  knowledge  as  it  now  is.  Space 
was,  Time  was,  and  there  were  Relations  of  position  and  of 
action  and  reaction,  involving  Causation  and  Law;  there  was 
Matter,  and  Tifotion,  and  some  semblance  of  Order;  and  the 
processes  were  teleological ;  they  moved  forward  toward  some 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOStlCISM,  AND  CRITICISM      149 

End ; — all  this,  in  the  origins  and  ongoings  of  the  evolution- 
ary process  before  the  human  race  came  into  existence. 

Therefore,  all  possible  hypotheses  of  evolution,  as  applied 
to  a  world  where  as  yet  no  human  knowledge  is,  must  them- 
selves imply  the  miost  tremendous  and  unlimited  confidence  in 
the  valid  applicability  of  such  knowledge  to  the  real  Being  of 
the  World.  No  thorough-going  evolutionist  can  be  an  agnostic 
with  respect  to  the  categories  without  becoming  absurd.  But  a 
fortiori  is  all  this  true  when  an  attempt  is  made  to  treat  of 
the  categories  themselves  in  terms  of  an  evolutionary  hy- 
pothesis. We  are  then  assuming  to  know,  on  grounds  valid  for 
all  present  knowledge,  and  beyond  or  beneath  the  limits  of 
which  no  knowledge  is  conceivable,  how  knowledge  began  to 
be  and  got  itself  established,  when  as  yet  there  was  no  knowl- 
edge. If  there  is  any  subject  about  which  one  may  be  an  ag- 
nostic, surely  it  is  just  this:  How  did  knowledge  of  any  sort 
and  about  any  thing,  come  to  be?  Surely  also,  if  we  know 
anything  with  assurance,  we  know  that  knowledge  of  the  con- 
ditions on  which  the  origin  and  development  of  all  knowledge 
depended,  can  claim  no  exemption  from  the  darkening  or  il- 
lumining effects  of  the  so-called  categories.  May  I  trust  them, 
as  representing  and  revealing  Reality  ?  Yes,  or  No  ?  If  I  may, 
then  I  cannot  be  agnostic  with  reference  to  their  present  valid- 
ity, and  at  the  same  time  retain  a  foolish  faith  in  respect  to 
their  applicability  to  a  doubtful  past. 

There  is  only  one  conceivable  way  in  which  the  most  thor- 
oughly sceptical  examination  of  the  problem  in  knowledge 
can  even  seem  to  end  in  what  has  been  described  as  "  epis- 
temological  agnosticism."  This  is  by  a  criticism  which  results 
in  showing  that  man's  cognitive  faculties  are,  by  their  very 
constitution,  involved  in  irreducible  and  essential  self-contra- 
dictions. Therefore,  they  cannot  claim  any  indisputable  au- 
thority for  their  functioning  or  for  its  products  as  truthful 
representatives  of  the  real  Being  of  the  World.  In  other  words, 
the  moment  it  tries  to  attribute  a  valid  ontological  (or  ''  extra' 


150  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

mental ")  reference  to  any  human  cognitive  processes,  com- 
plete agnosticism  finds  itself  involved  in  hopeless  contradic- 
tions. In  the  developments  of  modern  philosophy  this  view 
has  taken  shape  in  a  doctrine  of  alleged  "  antinomies."  In  its 
later  forms  the  doctrine  of  antinomies  goes  back  to  Kant; 
but  it  has  assumed  a  variety  of  forms, — in  general  far  cruder 
and  less  penetrated  with  critical  acumen, — in  the  hands  of  such 
writers  as  Sir  William  Hamilton,  Dean  IMansel,  and  'Mr.  Brad- 
ley. In  the  case  of  each  one  of  these  writers,  however,  and 
even  in  the  case  of  Kant,  who  was  by  far  the  greatest  of  them 
all,  the  contradictions  alleged  to  be  found  in  the  laws  which 
control  the  operations  of  man's  cognitive  faculty,  really  exist 
only  between  the  barren  and  artificial  abstractions  which  in  no 
case  truthfully  represent  either  the  real  constitution  or  the 
actual  operations  of  this  faculty. 

In  a  word,  the  doctrine  of  antinomies  finds  its  grounds,  not 
in  the  actual  experience  of  knowledge,  under  its  normal  con- 
ditions and  limitations,  but  in  the  attempt  of  the  doctrinaire 
to  press  his  sceptical  criticism  beyond  the  limits,  where  neither 
scepticism  nor  criticism  can  go. 

We  might,  indeed,  object  to  the  word  "  antinomy "  as  a 
specious  attempt  to  incorporate  essentially  contradictory  con- 
ceptions under  a  single  term  skillfully  selected  for  a  sinis- 
ter purpose.  For,  in  trutli,  Jaws  {vofioi.)  cannot  antagon- 
ize each  other.  Laws  have  only  an  abstract  or  ideal  ex- 
istence; they  are  generalizations  which  summarize  the  way  in 
which,  under  certain  conditions,  realities  are  known  or  believed 
to  behave  themselves.  In  nature,  every  concrete  and  actual 
occurrence  is,  as  it  were,  a  summary  of  numerous  so-called 
laws,  which,  by  the  employment  of  logical  subtleties,  may  easily 
be  made — as  mere  laws — squarely  to  contradict  each  other. 
Thus  the  flight  of  every  arrow,  the  actual  overtaking  of  every 
tortoise  by  an  Achilles,  solves  the  ancient  and  sophistical  an- 
tinomy which  proved  such  facts  impossible.  It  is  real  things 
and  real  selves,  which  actually  oppose  each  other;  which  strive 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      151 

in  contrary  directions;  which  clash  and  act  and  react  upon  each 
other,  under  an  infinite  variety  of  conditions  and  in  an  in- 
finite number  of  ways.  This  is  the  real  world,  as  we  indubitably 
know  it  to  be.  Our  knowledge  is  for  us  the  solution  of  the 
problem  which  every  transaction  in  the  real  world  concretely 
solves, — the  problem,  namely,  of  how  many  different  things 
and  selves  can  actually  exist  in  the  World  which  we — although 
always  imperfectly,  and,  in  general  doubtfully,  as  to  its  precise 
and  comprehensive  manner — know  to  be  some  sort  of  a  Unity. 
It  is  not  necessary  or  feasible  here  to  consider  in  detail  ^ 
the  different  forms  which  have  been  taken  by  the  philosophical 
doctrine  of  alleged  "  antinomies."  It  is  notable,  however,  that 
the  advocates  of  the  doctrine  all  feel  obliged  in  some  way  or 
other  to  open  the  door  of  the  dark  cage  in  which  they  have 
confined  human  reason  as  though  it  were  a  pair,  or  a  group, 
of  wild  beasts  whose  very  nature  compelled  them  to  ceaseless 
warfare  and  attempts  at  mutual  destruction,  into  the  sun-lit 
spaces  of  the  kingdom  of  reality  and  truth.  This  the  more 
humane  and  kindly  disposed  among  these  agnostics  toward  the 
intellectual  strivings  and  emotional  satisfactions  of  humanity 
usually  accomplish  by  an  appeal  to  the  necessities  of  faith. 
Kant's  avowed  purpose  was  to  remove  (the  pretense  of)  knowl- 
edge, in  order  to  make  room  for  faith.  He  would  have  us  be- 
lieve that,  and  act  "  as  though,"  Reality  really  is  what  pure 
reason  would  seem  to  show  it  cannot  be.  In  doing  this,  how- 
ever, Kant  virtually  opens  the  back  door  to  many  of  the 
psychological  and  epistemological  truths  concerning  the  na- 
ture and  validity  of  all  human  knowledge,  which  he  has  before 
either  rudely  thrust  out,  or  politely  bowed  out,  of  the  front 
door  of  his  critical  edifice.  But  man  cannot  deal  in  this  double 
way  with  his  own  reason.  Human  reason  is  either  all, — or  at 
least  much  more  than  Kant  allows  by  way  of  so-called  faith, — 

1  See  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  Chapter  XIV,  where 
"  the  antinomies  "  of  Kant  and  of  Mr.  Bradley  are  given  a  thorough 
criticism. 


152  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

or  it  is  nothing.  And  the  Oriental  doctrine  of  jMava  is  really 
more  consistent^  however  untenable  and  practically  mischievous, 
than  is  the  Occidental  doctrine  of  antinomies.  Thus  when  Mr. 
Bradley  has  convicted  the  constitutional  forms  of  human  cog- 
nition of  being,  in  "  their  very  essence,"  "  infected  "  and  "  self- 
contradictory,"  in  one  part  of  his  book,  he  cannot  possibly  suc- 
ceed in  establishing  a  rational  ontology  in  another  part  of  the 
same  book.  Such  philosophical  agnosticism  and  any  kind  of 
metaphysics — whether  that  upon  which  the  "  plain  man  "  goes 
about  his  daily  work,  or  the  "  scientist "  conducts  the  experi- 
ments of  his  laboratory,  or  the  "  philosopher  "  discourses  of 
the  categories — cannot  lie  down  in  the  same  bed  together. 

Within  the  fitting  limits,  therefore,  scepticism  and  agnos- 
ticism remain  legitimate  and  valuable  attitudes  of  the  human 
mind  toward  all  the  objects  both  of  knowledge  and  of  so-called 
faith.  Their  legitimacy,  and  even  their  necessity  for  the  growth 
of  knowledge,  is  proved  by  the  experience  both  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  race.  It  is  not  simply  that  in  this  way  only  can 
error  be  discerned  and  separated  from  truth;  but  it  is  also 
and  chiefly  that  the  very  life  of  the  mind,  in  its  most  eager  and 
successful  pursuit  of  truth,  necessarily  follows  the  same  path. 
But  these  attitudes  are  limited  in  respect  to  all  forms 
of  alleged  truth,  by  the  necessities  of  the  practical  life  and 
by  the  growing  experience  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race. 
And  inasmuch  as  no  experience  can  possibly  be  mentally  repre- 
sented, not  to  say  faithfully  analyzed  and  adequately  repre- 
sented, as  a  purely  subjective  affair;  all  experience  involves 
either  an  immediate  seizure,  or  a  more  or  less  incomplete  com- 
prehension through  processes  of  reasoning,  of  the  existence, 
qualities,  and  relations,  of  real  things  and  real  selves.  Tliis 
growth  of  knowledge  is  a  sort  of  progressive  limitation  of  the 
attitudes  of  scepticism  and  agnosticism ;  while  at  the  same  time 
it  opens  up  new  fields  to  these  same  attitudes  of  mind.  But 
when  these  attitudes  are  taken  toward  the  principles  and  pre- 


SCEPTICISM,  AGNOSTICISM,  AND  CRITICISM      153 

suppositions  of  all  knowledge,  towai'd  the  validity  of  the  onto- 
logical  reference  and  the  truth-telling  character  of  the  cognitive 
faculties  of  man;  then  they  involve  themselves  in  hopeless  con- 
fusions and  self-contradictions;  then  a  giddiness  of  intellect 
results  which  tumbles  the  whole  fabric  of  human  knowledge 
into  a  bottomless  pit  of  both  logical  and  practical  absurdity. 


CHAPTER  YIII 

METAPHYSICS.  AS  A  THEORY   OF  REALITY 

The  relation  between  a  pliilosopliical  theory  of  knowledge 
and  s^'stematic  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of  reality  is  so  in- 
timate that  they  may  almost  be  regarded  as  two  aspects  of 
essentially  the  same  problem.  The  grounds  for  this  intimate 
relation  are  laid  in  the  very  nature  of  knowledge  itself.  The 
consequence  of  the  relation  shows  itself  in  almost  all  discus- 
sions of  either  of  these  two  problems,  or  two  aspects  of  one 
problem.  For  one's  attitude  towai-d  the  prol)lem  of  knowledge 
is  sure  to  be  influenced  by  one's  ontological  theories;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  either  the  dogmatic,  the  sceptical,  the  critical, 
or  the  wholly  agnostic,  attitude  pervades  and  influences  the  dis- 
cussions of  most  writers  on  metaphysics.  Kant,  indeed,  set 
out  upon  his  prolonged  journey  through  the  several  fields  of 
human  reason,  in  the  critical  way,  and  with  the  purpose  of 
making  a  clear-cut  distinction  between  this  journey  and  an 
excursion  in  ontological  speculation.  Ontology,  he  proposed 
to  treat  in  summary  fashion,  after  he  had  tested  tlie  cognitive 
powers  by  the  critical  process.  But  his  criticism  ended  in  a 
complete  agnosticism,  so  far  as  any  valid  ontology,  or  theory 
of  reality  was  concerned ;  at  the  same  time  this  entire  process 
of  criticism  was  itself  permeated  and  influenced  by  uncriti- 
cized  metaphysical  assumptions  and  presuppositions.  Thus  the 
Kantian  agnosticism  excludes  the  possibility  of  metaphysics  as 
even  an  approximately  valid  theory  of  reality;  it  reduces  meta- 
physics to  a  dry  and  uninteresting  tabulation  of  illusory  cate- 
gories and  compulsory  antinomies. 

In  the  interests  of  clearness,  then,  it  would  seem  desirable 

154 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF   REALITY       15,") 

to  preface  the  following  cliaptors  on  metaphysics  as  a  theory 
of  reality  by  a  brief  summary  of  the  conclusions  reached  in  the 
preceding  chapters  on  the  theory  of  knowledge. 

And,  first,  we  have  seen  what  knowledge  is  from  the 
psychological  point  of  view :  that  is,  what  it  is  to  know  as  an 
actual  fact  of  human  experience.  In  this  datum  all  theories 
of  knowledge  must  find  themselves  included :  they  are  false 
and  mischievous  or  defective  and  unsatisfying,  if  they  exclude 
any  of  the  essential  features  or  implications  of  this  datum. 
Now  knowledge  is  never  obtained  or  substantiated  by  the  ratio- 
cinations of  pure  intellect  alone.  It  invariably  implies,  and 
in  its  more  immediate  forms  of  self-consciousness  and  scnse- 
pereeption  it  actually  is,  an  experience  which  involves  the  en- 
tire active  Self.  It  requires  the  felt  strivings  of  a  will,  op- 
posed by  a  reality  that  does  not  will  as  it  wills.  As  being  an 
active  and  suffering  part  of  this  world  of  things  and  selves, 
men  know  tJiat  they  are,  and  what  they  are;  and  in  increasing 
measure,  that  things  are,  and  what  things  are.  Any  critic  of 
knowledge  who  takes  his  datum  of  experience  as  other,  or  less, 
than  this  experienced  fact,  is  doomed  to  wander  from  the  very 
start ;  and  he  is  more  fortunate  than  most  such  critics  are,  if 
he  pulls  his  wits  together  before  he  finds  himself  virtually  in- 
sane, in  the  midst  of  the  shadow-shapes  of  his  own  abstrac- 
tions and  speculative  ghosts. 

From  this  it  follows,  second,  that  all  knowledge  is  of  reality. 
Some  real  being — some  Self,  myself  or  some  other  self,  or  some 
Thing — is  always  the  object  of  knowledge.  There  is  no  cogni- 
tion which  has  not  existence  for  its  correlative.  Neither  is 
the  real  being  which  is  the  knower's  object, — and  made  such 
by  his  cognitive  activity, — to  be  resolved  by  any  sceptical  or 
critical  examination  into  a  dream  without  a  dreamer,  or  a 
shadow  without  either  substance  or  sunlight  to  account  for  its 
casting.  Two  words  have,  indeed,  been  particularly  potent  in 
developing  and  impressing  a  theory  of  knowledge  which  aims 
to  render  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of  reality  impossible  by  ren- 


15r>  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

doring  all  knowledge  illusory.  These  are  the  word  "  phenome- 
non "  and  the  word  "  idea."  For  the  philosophical  misuse  of 
the  first  of  these  words,  in  modern  times,  Kant  is  chiefly  re- 
sponsible. With  him  phenomenon  was  identical  with  the  ob- 
ject of  knowledge,  and  "  noumenon,"  or  actuality,  or  "  thing- 
in-itself,"  was  retired  into  the  background  as  essentially  un- 
knowable and,  therefore,  forever  unknown.  For  a  somewhat 
similar  distinction  the  words  "  appearance "  and  "  reality " 
have  been  substituted  by  a  modern  writer.  By  forcing  to  a 
false  issue  this  distinction  one  has  at  the  last  to  face  an  impass- 
able gulf  between  the  apparent  and  the  actual  or  real  world 
{die  wirJcUche  und  die  scheinhare  Welt).  But  the  very  distinc- 
tion between  the  phenomenon  and  the  noumenon,  the  apparent 
and  the  real,  arises  only  in  the  process  of  knowledge;  and  it  is 
valid  proof  of  the  falsity  of  the  agnostic  position  toward  the 
authority  for  reality  of  the  cognitive  process.  The  very  nature 
of  the  distinction — dependent,  as  it  is,  upon  the  nature  of  the 
experience  in  which  it  originates — shows  that  its  two  terms  are 
mutually  related,  and  dependent,  each  upon  the  other,  for  their 
m'eaning  and  for  their  application  to  every  act  of  knowledge 
and  every  class  of  objects.  There  are  no  phenomena  that  are 
not  of  some  real  object,  to  some  real  subject;  there  are  no  ap- 
pearances which  are  not  of  some  real  thing,  or  self,  to  some 
real  self. 

That  kind  of  subjectivism,  with  its  sceptical  philosophy, 
which  interposed  some  so-called  idea  between  the  knower  and 
the  object  known,  and  then  insisted  that  things  and  souls  are 
so  unlike  that  no  valid  commerce  can  be  had  between  them, 
but  tliat  all  intercourse  must  be  rendered  illusory,  so  far  as 
reality  is  concerned,  by  being  mediated  through  images  of 
reality,  may  be  said  to  have  suffered  a  death  that  knows  no 
resurrection.  Its  slayers  have  been  the  critical  philosophy 
which  emanated  from  Kant,  and  the  splendid  triumphs  of 
the  particular  sciences  which  have  proceeded  with  their  work 
of  increasing  knowledge  of  the  real  world  on  the  basis  of  a 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY      157 

common-sense  faith  in  the  cognitive  powers  of  collective  hu- 
manity. 

But,  thirdly,  every  one  who  attempts  a  systematic  study  of 
metaphysical  problems  must  bear  constantly  in  mind  the  de- 
grees of  knowledge  and  tlie  limits  which  are  normal  with  the 
different  kinds  of  knowledge,  in  order  to  save  himself  at  every 
point  from  those  errors  of  over-confidence  that  arc  apt  to  char- 
acterize the  j)hilosophy  of  Absolutism,  If  not  only  the  stamp 
of  imperfection,  but  also  the  certainty  of  error,  belongs  to  all 
our  human  attempts  at  comprehending  the  concrete  realities 
of  the  World,  even  when  these  attempts  are  confined  within  the 
limits  of  some  definite  problem  in  the  pettiest  division  of  the 
smallest  of  the  particular  sciences;  then,  surely,  the  attempt  to 
present  a  tenable  and  comprehensive  doctrine  of  the  total  Being 
of  the  World  should  begin,  proceed,  and  terminate,  with  a 
goodly  show  of  genuine  modesty.  Such  a  system  of  meta- 
physics can  never  become  a  matter  to  be  tested  by  the  indi- 
vidual's self-consciousness  or  by  the  sense-impressions  of  the 
multitude  of  nuankind.  It  must  be  the  result  of  reflective 
thinking,  which,  so  far  as  possible,  brings  together  the  experi- 
ences of  the  race  in  an  effort  to  interpret  them  so  as  to  satisfy 
their  many-sided  and  most  imperative  and  permanent  demands. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  the  philosopher  has  certain  rea- 
sons for  an  unusual  confidence  and  a  large  measure  of  good 
cheer,  when  he  turns  to  the  subject  of  metaphysics  proper. 
For,  after  all,  it  is  here  that  he  may  force,  if  he  is  skillful,  all 
his  fellow  thinkers — so-called  "  plain  men,"  students  of  the 
particular  sciences,  and  students  of  philosophy — into  a  certain 
large  amount  of  agreement  with  liimself  and  with  one  another. 
In  truth,  all  men  are  naturally  and  necessarily  metaphysicians. 
They  are  obliged  to  interpret  experience  in  terms  of  some  sort 
of  a  theory  of  reality.  Their  differences  in  the  form  of  inter- 
pretation arise  chiefly  from  two  causes:  (1)  Some  are  occu- 
pied more  seriously  and  intelligently  with  the  interpretation 
of  one  corner  or  side  of  experience,  and  some  with  another; 


158  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

(2)  some  are  more  bold  than  others  and  willing  to  go  further 
toward  an  attempt  at  an  ultimate  and  comprehensive  inter- 
pretation, while  others  are  timid  and  draw  back.  Thus  those 
metaphysical  wranglings  of  which  agnosticism  makes  so  much 
are  largely  due  to  differences  of  emphasis,  and  differences  as 
to  the  point  at  whicli  different  thinkers  get  confused,  or  tired, 
and  resolve  to  stop  thinking. 

And,  finally,  in  attempting  the  problems  of  metaphysics  as 
a  theory  of  reality,  the  only  safe  way  is  to  start  from  experi- 
ence and  always  be  ready  to  return  to  the  testing  of  experience 
again.  In  saying  this  it  is  evident  that  we  are  using  the  word 
"  experience "  in  a  most  comprehensive  and,  therefore,  some- 
what vague  way.  Out  of  experience,  as  the  fleeting  state  of 
the  individual's  consciousness,  considered  as  such,  no  knowledge, 
and  a  fortiori,  no  system  of  metaphysics  can  come.  But  this 
is  not  the  whole  of  experience,  in  the  larger  and  fuller  mean- 
ing of  the  word.  All  that  the  race  has  acquired  of  knowledge, 
including  the  knowledge  of  its  own  instincts,  emotions,  striv- 
ings, habits,  history,  as  well  as  of  the  qualities  and  relations 
and  evolution  of  things,  affords  contributions  to  that  theory 
of  reality,  which  it  is  the  aim  of  metaphysics  to  establish  on 
ever  broader  and  sounder  foundations  of  experience.  Thus  it 
happens  that  we  may  know  more  about  the  meaning  of  tliis 
whole  World  as  interpreted  by  the  race's  experience  with  It, 
than  we  can  as  yet  know  about  the  constitution  of  radium,  or 
the  causes  that  operate  in  the  development  of  the  sea-worm,  or 
in  the  behavior  of  a  white  blood-corpuscle  in  its  fight  with  poi- 
sonous bacteria. 

Metaphysics  is  an  attempt  to  answer  by  reflective  thinking, 
on  the  basis  of  experience,  what  Matthew  Arnold  has  declared 
to  be  a  "first  want":  This  is  the  "want  to  know  what  being 
is."  Or  as  Ribot  has  well  said :  "  Metaphysics  is  but  a  most 
noble  and  elevated  way  of  conceiving  things."  All  human  ex- 
perience of  knowledge  both  assumes  and  enforces  and  illus- 
trates the  fact,  with  its  various  implications  and  convictions : — 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY       159 

Something  is  real.  Nay,  more:  it  all  assumes  and  enforces  and 
illustrates  the  vast  and  complicated  general  fact,  that  innu- 
merable real  selves  and  real  things  are  known  to  be  existent, 
and  to  be  actually  related,  in  One  World.  With  reference  to 
this  assumption  metaphysics  proposes  two  questions  which  be- 
come its  two  most  important  prol)lcms  in  the  effort  to  inter- 
pret the  experience  in  which  the  assumption  is  involved.  First: 
What  are  the  qualities,  or  characteristics,  possessed  by  all  that 
makes  a  valid  claim  to  be  considered  real  ?  or,  in  other 
words:  What  is  it  to  be  real,  as  things  and  selves  are  known 
to  be  real  ?  And,  second :  What  kind  of  a  unity  actually  be- 
longs to  this  world  of  concrete  and  manifold  realities?  or,  in 
other  W'Ords :  How  shall  we  understand  and  interpret  the  Be- 
ing of  the  One  real  World  ? 

The  moment  the  meaning  of  these  questions  is  comprehended, 
it  is  seen  that  metaphysics  is  no  side  issue  or  adventitious  and 
unimportant  undertaking;  neither  is  it  an  exercise  for  phi- 
losophers of  the  school,  or  of  the  den,  alone  to  undertake.  On 
the  contrary,  its  problems  are — some  of  them  in  their  con- 
crete forms,  at  least— solved  each  hour,  and  each  moment,  of 
every  day,  in  the  interests  of  the  practical  life  and,  indeed,  to 
meet  the  demands  of  living  at  all.  The  inmates  of  no  mad- 
house are  so  insane  as  would  be  the  man  who  had  absolutely 
no  standards  for  distinguishing  between  the  reality  of  his  own 
Self  and  his  own  fleeting  states,  or  between  the  reality  of 
things  or  other  selves  and  his  own  illusions  or  dreams.  More- 
over, every  adult  human  being  is  absolutely  convinced,  let  him 
be  never  so  savage  or  near  to  the  mythical  being  of  the  "prim- 
itive man,"  that  the  world  in  the  midst  of  which  he  lives,  with 
all  its  diversities  of  phenomena  and  changes  in  appearance,  is, 
after  all,  in  some  sort  really  one  and  the  same  world  through- 
out. In  a  word:  Every  man  is  an  unfaltering  believer  in 
reality;  every  man  is  a  more  or  less  skillful  metaphysician. 
While,  if  the  metaphysics  could  be  taken  out  from  under  the 
so-called  positive  sciences  they,  too,  would  not  be  distinguish- 


160  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

able  from  illusions  and  dreams;  although  they  might  have  the 
distinction  of  involving  a  consensus  of  many  dreamers  and 
lunatics.  But  among  all  these  classes  of  compulsory  metaphy- 
sicians, there  are  none  so  dogmatic  as  the  men  who  decline  to 
tolerate  metaphysical  discussion  at  all.  "Jacobi,  Fichte,  and 
Schelling,  all  belong/'  says  Herbart,  to  the  age  when  people 
were  singing: — 

"Hear  ye!     Things-in-themselves  will  be  sold  under  the  hammer! 
Since  Metaphysics  lately  deceased  without  leaving  an  heir." 

To  which  elegant  couplet  Mr.  Shadworth  Hodgson  has  pro- 
posed to  reply  as  follows: 

"  What   though    Things-in-themselves   have    been    dispersed    by   an 
auction, 
Who  was  the  auctioneer?     Why,  Metaphysic  herself." 

There  need  be  as  little  mystery  about  the  method  of  meta- 
physical philosophy  as  about  the  nature  of  metaphysics  in  gen- 
eral. How  the  ^'  plain  man  "  arrives  at  his  fragmentary  and 
theoretically  unsatisfying,  but  more  or  less  practically  effective 
notions  as  to  the  nature  of  its  realities,  and  as  to  the  oneness 
of  the  world  of  his  experience,  the  analysis  of  knowledge  has 
already  shown  sufficiently.  The  origin,  nature,  and  validity  of 
the  naive  metaphysics  of' the  physical  and  natural  sciences,  as 
well  as  the  method  which  they  employ,  have  also  been  indicated. 
But  the  method  which  criticism  must  employ  is  a  deduction 
from  the  very  nature  of  philosophy.  Its  metaphysical  system 
aims  to  harmonize  and  interpret  the  assumptions  and  conclu- 
sions of  the  particular  sciences  with  regard  to  the  nature  of 
real  things,  and  real  selves,  and  the  actual  relations  and  trans- 
actions existing  between  them.  In  a  word,  the  method  of  meta- 
physics must  be  based  on  experience  with  concrete  realities;  it 
must  follow  with  a  docile  and  free  critical  spirit  the  lead  of 
those  sciences  which  deal  with  such  realities;  but  it  must  tran- 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY      161 

scene!  these  sciences  in  its  effort  to  reacli  a  theory  of  the  Being 
of  the  World  that  shall  harmonize  and  interpret  the  truths 
which  they  aJl  proclaim.  For — to  quote  again  the  pregnant 
sentence  of  Matthew  Arnold :  "  We  want  first  to  know  what 
being  is."  He  who  contributes  anything  to  the  deeper  satis- 
faction of  this  want  adds  something  essential  to  the  higher  wel- 
fare of  humanity.  For  man,  being  rational,  does  not,  and  can- 
not "  live  by  bread  alone."  The  life  of  reason  must  live  on  the 
exercise  and  nourishment  of  reason.  Thus  the  total  interests 
of  humanity  demand  a  theory  of  reality  which  shall  be,  on  the 
one  hand,  firmly  founded  in  its  cognitive  experience,  and  on 
the  other  hand,  well  adapted  to  serve  all  its  practical  needs. 
Indeed,  how  men  lite  and  how  men  die,  depends  chiefly  upon 
the  character  of  their  theory  of  reality  and  upon  the  manner  of 
their  holding  it. 

What  has  given  metaphysical  philosophy  an  ill  reputation 
among  so-called  practical  men,  as  well  as  scientific  experts, 
has  oftener  than  otherwise  been  its  tendency  to  deal  with  mere 
abstractions ;  to  rise  with  a  bound  to  speculative  conclusions  on 
the  wings  of  these  abstractions;  and  then  to  refuse  considera- 
tions primarily  derived  from  the  concrete  realities  whose  ex- 
istence constitutes  that  World,  the  "  Being  "  of  which  meta- 
physics aims  to  know.  What  can  man  know  about  the  Absolute, 
— that  it  is,  not  to  say,  what  it  is, — which  is  not  known  in  and 
through  the  relative?  The  only  obvious  answer  to  this  ques- 
tion is :  "  Nothing."  To  claim  more  is  to  substitute  for  knowl- 
edge the  pretence  of  knowledge.  Thus  much,  at  least,  the 
Kantian  sceptical  criticism  of  metaphysics  as  ontology  has 
made  perfectly  clear.  But  the  student  of  the  theory  of  reality 
may  regain  his  confidence  by  returning  to  the  point  of  standing 
which  he  has  reached  after  carefully  threading  his  way  through 
the  confusions  of  the  sceptical  theory  of  knowledge.  For  him, 
the  necessary  forms  of  human  cognition  are  no  longer,  as  scep- 
ticism holds  them  to  be,  impotencies  of  the  intellect;  they  are, 
the  rather,  potencies  of  reason.    They  are  not  insuperable  bar- 


163  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

riers  to  a  vision  of  reality;  they  are  insiglits  into  the  very  nature 
of  reality. 

The  traditional  metaphysician — to  adopt  Hegel's  figure  of 
speech — is  indeed  apt  to  paint  his  entire  picture  in  shades  of 
gray  {Grau  in  Grau)  ;  and  this,  as  Hegel  thinks,  is  because  the 
artist  has  upon  his  pallette  only  the  "  abstract  essence  of  the 
categories"  {das  ganz  Ahstracte  der  Begriffe).  Let  us,  how- 
ever, endeavor  to  escape — if  only  partiall}' — the  charge  of  try- 
ing to  depict  the  concrete  variety  of  form,  color,  and  relation, 
which  undoubtedly  belongs  to  the  world  of  human  experience, 
with  the  dullness  and  monotony  of  abstractions  (layer  of  gray 
upon  gray,  or  beside  gray).  This  we  may  do  by  a  close  ques- 
tioning of  some  actually  existing  concrete  thing.  And  any 
old,  or  new,  "  Thing  "  will  do.  For  the  mystery  of  real  being 
(of  "  Thing-hood,"  if  so  convenient  but  uncouth  a  term  be 
pardoned)  is  incorporated,  quite  fully  enough  to  exhaust  the 
most  prolonged  and  acute  analysis,  in  every  humblest  and  least 
conspicuous  example.  A  flower  "  in  the  crannied  wall,"  a  stone 
picked  up  by  the  wayside,  a  clod  against  which  the  toe  strikes 
in  the  ploughed  field,  will  do  as  well  as  a  human  organism,  a 
jewel,  or  a  fixed  star.  To  this  "  Thing  "  we  will  put  the  fol- 
lowing question :  What  is  it  that  you,  the  object  of  Icnowledge, 
are,  which  compels  me  to  know  you  as  not  mere  object  of  my 
knowledge,  but  as  having  an  existence  of  your  own?  In  other 
words:  What  are  those  characteristics  which  this  particular 
thing  possesses  in  common  with  every  other  thing,  and  which 
entitle  it  to  be  known  as  real,  and  so  capable  of  taking  its 
part  in  the  actual  transactions  of  a  real  world? 

The  attempt  to  answer  in  the  most  nai've  and  concrete  man- 
ner an  inquir}'  into  the  real  nature,  and  the  value  for  the  world 
of  actual  events,  of  any  individual  thing,  leads  us  at  once  to 
those  conceptions  which  in  their  most  abstract  form,  are  the 
so-called  categories  of  metaphysical  philosophy.  To  try 
the  issue  with  this  one  example ;  let  it  be  a  stone  which  I  am 
striving  to  place  on  top  of  a  wall.     This  stone  is  known  to 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY       IfiS 

me  as  "  in  space"  and  as  "occupying  space."  However  I  may 
have  come,  from  the  point  of  view  of  psychological  theory,  to 
localize  and  measure  things  (whether  this  power  is  wholly  the 
result  of  experiences  of  mine,  or  whether  things  have  some 
original  (juality  or  vague  "bigness"),  I  know  this  stone  as 
something  real,  and  as  actually  located  and  measurable  with 
reference  to  its  own  size  and  its  spatial  relations  to  other 
things.  I  know  the  same  thing  as  also  existing  "  in  time  " ; 
and  I  infer  and  believe  in  its  continued  existence  in  time,  irre- 
spective of  the  time  during  which  I  am  observing  it.  My  pas- 
sionate conviction  with  respect  to  these  spatial  and  temporal 
characteristics  is  endowed  with  all  the  qualities  of  an  infallible 
knowledge.  This  thing,  however,  may  be  changed  in  position 
and  in  size;  for  in  order  to  adapt  it  to  its  uses  as  a  part  of  the 
wall,  the  effecting  of  such  changes  is  the  very  transaction  I 
am  striving  to  bring  about.  But  I  shall  have  to  use  "  force  " 
for  this;  it  will  "cause"  me  a  severe  and  perhaps  painful 
strain  as  /  cause  it  to  break  in  pieces  or  to  be  hoisted  entire 
to  its  place  on  the  wall.  And  when  I  get  it  placed,  although 
by  the  "  action  "  of  frost,  or  by  some  person's  ruthless  hands,  it 
may  subsequently  be  displaced  (a  transaction  which  may  also 
be  described  by  saying,  "  It  has  changed  its  place,"  or  "  Some- 
one has  changed  its  place"),  I  positively  know  that  it  will  not 
grow  hands  and  feet,  over-night  or  in  hundreds  of  years,  and 
so  descend  "of  itself"  from  the  wall,  by  its  own  two  hands 
or  on  all  its  fours.  For  this  would  be  to  violate  all  manner 
of  "  laws  " ;  it  would  imply  a  change  in  its  own  "  nature  " 
which  is  absolutely  forbidden  by  that  larger  Nature  of  which 
it  is  only  a  part.  As  a  stone,  it  is  "  adapted  to,"  and  fulfills 
its  "  purpose "  in  part  by  being  built  into  a  wall  with  others 
of  its  own  species  or  kind.  It  cannot  be  allowed  to  change  itself 
arbitrarily;  and  then  to  undertake  the  fulfillment  of  purposes 
for  which  by  its  own  nature  and  according  to  its  proper  legal 
relations  to  other  things,  it  is  in  no  respect  adapted. 

In  some  such  manner  the  plain  man  might  rehearse  his  un- 


164  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

taught  metaphysics,  or  theory  of  reality,  as  applied  to  the 
"  Thing-hood  "  of  the  stone.  And  if  it  were  any  other  material 
existence,  whose  claim  to  reality  he  was  substantiating  in  terms 
of  knowledge,  he  could  not  depart  in  any  essential  way  from  a 
terminology  which  embodies  the  same  conceptions.  Nor  would 
the  metaphysics  of  the  "  scientist " — physicist,  chemist,  geolo- 
gist, or  what  not — differ  essentially  from  that  of  the  plain  man. 
The  scientific  measurements  of  times  and  spaces  would  indeed 
be  infinitely  more  refined  and  accurate;  the  scientific  knowl- 
edge of  the  qualities,  the  possible  or  actual  changes  in  the 
form  and  substance  of  the  thing  would  be  indefinitely  more 
subtle  and  varied;  the  scientific  grasp  upon  the  laws  regu- 
lating the  changes  and  the  relations  of  this  thing  to  other 
things  would  be  vastly  more  firm  and  comprehensive;  science's 
descriptive  history  of  the  thing  in  the  past,  of  the  record  of 
its  life  and  development,  would  be,  however  tentative  and 
doubtful,  much  more  interesting  and  even  amazing.  But  the 
man  of  science  could  neither  transcend,  nor  contract,  whether 
in  number  or  in  their  applicability,  just  these  same  categories 
which  the  plain  man  would  use.  And  any  attempt  on  the  part 
of  science,  either  to  misuse  or  to  eliminate  any  of  them,  would 
most  surely  meet  with  defeat.  For  these  are  the  forms  which 
the  cognition  of  things  impresses  upon  things,  in  the  belief 
that  they  are  the  forms  of  the  real  existence  of  things.  Or, 
better  said :  These  are  the  forms  in  which  the  experience  of 
knowledge  validates  the  real  nature  and  actual  behavior  of 
things. 

Quality,  Relation,  Change,  Time,  Space  and  Motion,  Force 
and  Causation,  Quantity  and  Measure,  Unity  and  Number, 
Form,  Law,  and  Final  Purpose, — such  are  the  categories 
which,  if  we  have  enumerated  them  correctly  and  exhaustively, 
are  given  to  all  men  in  experience  as  the  characteristics  of 
each  and  every  Thing  which  men  know  as  real.  They  are  all, 
as  it  were,  present,  or  "  immanent,"  and  harmoniously  opera- 
tive, in  every  single  thing.     They  are  there;  they  belong  to 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY      lfi5 

the  concrete  reality.  In  experience  the  human  mind  becomes 
aware  of  them  slowly,  imperfectly,  and  one  or  two,  or  a  few, 
at  the  same  time,  according  to  the  wandering  of  the  Blich- 
punkt  of  attention.  Or  it  may  with  confidence  infer  them  a? 
existing  in  many  real  objects  of  which  it  has  never  had  the 
experience  of  observing  them,  and  of  which  it  can  never  hope 
to  have  this  experience. 

But  when  it  is  said  that  every  real  being  is  known  as  real, 
because  it  may  be  present  in  experience  under  this  same  variety 
of  thought-forms,  it  is  necessary  at  once  to  add  a  something 
more.  For  there  also  belongs  to  the  reality  of  every  being 
given  in  experience,  somewhat  more  than  is  obvious  to  all 
thought-forms.  What  this  somewhat  more  is,  can  only  be 
realized  when  it  is  remembered  that  the  activity  in  cognition 
is  not  mere  thinking;  and  that  when  this  activity  takes  the 
form  of  a  self-consciousness  which  reveals  to  the  Self  most 
fully  the  essence,  as  it  were,  of  its  own  being,  it  does  not 
make  the  Self  known  to  itself  as  a  pure  intellect  going  pas- 
sively through  a  series  of  thought-forms.  Hence,  it  becomes 
in  ^ome  sort  a  true  picture  of  what  the  Self  really  is,  when  we 
say:  It  knows  itself  as  having  thoughts,  but  as  being  a  will. 

It  is  at  once  noticeable  that  we  apply  these  characteristics 
of  reality  to  things  in  much  the  same  naive  but  instructive 
way  as  that  in  which  we  apply  them  to  ourselves.  None  of 
them  is  wholly  identified  with  the  reality  of  any  one  Thing; 
although  every  single  real  Thing  is  said  to  have,  or  to  possess, 
each  one  of  these  characteristics  in  order  that  it  may  lay  valid 
claim  to  be  called  real.  Neither  is  the  reality  of  any  thing 
thought  of  as  a  mere  and  fortuitous  aggregate  or  collection  of 
all  these  characteristics;  although,  as  we  have  seen,  its  thing- 
hood  requires  that  it  should  manage  to  combine,  or  hold  to- 
gether the  possession  of  them  all.  For  example,  we  do  not  say 
that  the  thing  is  any  one  of  its  several  qualities ;  we  do  not  even 
consent  to  identify  its  real  existence  with  the  sum-total  of  these 
qualities.     The  qualities  tell  us  what  it  is;  and  without  knowl- 


166  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

edge  of  these  qualities  we  should  not  even  know  that  it  really 
is.  There  are  no  unqualified  tilings;  but,  then,  the  qualities 
are  "  of "  the  things,  or  they  "  belong  to "  the  things. 
What  now  is  meant  by  the  "  It "  which  has  the  quali- 
ties ?  In  much  the  same  way  we  seem  to  be  compelled 
to  think  of  the  relations  of  things, — both  those  which  are  in- 
ternal and  exist  between  the  different  parts  and  qualities  of 
the  same  thing,  and  also  those  which  exist  between  any  par- 
ticular thing  and  a  vast  multitude  of  other  things.  Unrelated 
things  are  no-thing;  and  yet  we  are  not  completely  satisfied 
with  Lotze's  celebrated  maxim:  "To  be"  (in  reality)  "is 
to  be  related."  Things  stand  in  relations;  but  they  are  not 
composed  of  relations  or  wholly  to  be  identified,  in  respect  to 
the  reality  of  their  existence,  with  the  sum  of  the  relations  in 
which,  at  any  particular  time,  they  are  found  standing.  The 
very  essence  of  their  "  thinghood  "  requires  that  they  should 
be  able  to  enter  into  new  relations. 

Still  further  in  the  same  direction  of  an  attempt  to  dis- 
cover the  metaphysical  meaning  of  the  conceptions  which  are 
implicit  in  all  human  thinking,  it  is  to  be  observed :  All  these 
qualities  and  relations  of  things  are  entered  into  and  possessed 
by  the  things,  under  the  conditions  and  limitations  of  space 
and  time.  Hence  things  may  be  measured  and  numbered; 
and  on  the  basis  of  this  seemingly  simple  datum  of  fact  the 
most  wonderful  systems  of  so-called  pure  mathematics,  or  of 
mathematics  applied  to  all  sorts  of  things,  are  confidently 
erected.  And  the  reasonings  of  science  in  reliance  upon  the 
verity,  or  reality,  of  this  form  of  mental  activity,  are  con- 
firmed by  an  ever-enlarging  experience  of  tilings,  in  a  way 
which  only  fails  of  being  considered  miraculous,  because  it  is 
60  supremely  natural.  The  motions,  changes,  and  forces  ex- 
erted by  and  between  things,  are  themselves  measurable;  but 
it  is  still  the  tilings  which  undergo,  or  effect,  the  movements 
and  the  changes,  and  which  exert,  or  become  subject  to  the 
exertion    of,   their    inherent    forces.      Thus,    with    marvellous 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY       167 

systems  of  obvious  or  subtile  and  concealed  actions  and  reac- 
tions, tlie  real  and  living  world  is  ever  changing  and  recon- 
structing itself  anew.  For  although  the  things  are  not  to  be 
identified  witli  the  laws  which  they  obey, — and,  indeed,  law 
itself  is  only  an  abstraction  from  the  more  general  and  regu- 
lar forms  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  real  things;  yet 
all  things  do  conform  to  law,  and  this  conformity  is  the  condi- 
tion, so  to  say,  of  their  being  permitted  to  form  a  part  of,  and 
to  play  their  part  in,  the  One  World.  To  this  unity  of  plan, 
however  vaguely  known  and  imperfectly  conceived  it  may 
always  remain  to  the  mind  of  man,  every  individual  thing 
must  somehow  be  adapted  in  order  that  it  may  fulfill  its  man- 
ifold purposes  in  the  same  world. 

We  are  accustomed  to  use  the  word  "  It "  as  a  convenient 
summary  for  the  subject  of  all  those  categories,  or  character- 
istics, the  possession  of  which  is  necessary  to  estal)lisli  the  claim 
to  reality  of  each  particular  Thing,  In  this  one  word  "  It," 
however,  lurks  the  entire  mystery  of  existence.  This  fact  has 
led  to  the  mystical  and  abstract  language  which  metaphysics 
has  found  it  necessary  or  convenient  to  employ  in  order  to 
express  its  unclear  but  undisturbed  conviction  in  the  reality 
of  the  subject  of  all  the  qualities,  relations,  and  changes,  which 
are  observed  or  inferred  to  be  taking  place  in  the  world  of 
things.  This  alistract  conception  of  the  Subject-Thing,  of 
It,  of  that  which  has  the  qualities,  which  stands  in  the  rela- 
tions, which  undergoes  or  elTects  the  changes,  etc.,  it  has  em- 
bodied in  such  words  and  phrases,  as  "Substance,"  "Bearer" 
(Tniger — that  is,  of  states),  metaphysical  or  "  ontological 
subject,"  "  real  being,"  etc.  And  at  once,  of  course,  all  forms 
of  phenomenalism,  or  of  the  sceptical  denial  of  the  possibility 
of  metaphysics,  have  asked  in  a  sneering  way  the  question: 
"What  then  becomes  of  the  subject-thing  when  you  abstract 
all  its  qualities,  relations,  and  changes,  both  in  time  and  in 
space?  To  which  question  only  one  answer  is  possible  or  even 
conceivable :  "  At  once  it  becomes  no-Thing,"     A  better  form 


168  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  the  same  answer  would  be:  Without  all  these  it  could  not 
be,  or  be  conceived  of  as  being,  any  real  Thing.  But  the  re- 
turn question  is  just  as  inevitable  and  much  more  difficult 
to  answer.  For  the  searcher  after  this  metaphysical  mystery 
which  lies  in  the  very  word  "  It,"  and  which  seems  to  be  no 
mystery  at  all  to  the  consciousness  of  the  "  plainest "  of  men, 
may  renew  his  claims  by  starting  from  precisely  the  same 
standpoint  of  universal  experience,  and  by  making  precisely 
the  same  appeal  to  this  experience  for  the  coveted  answer. 
Why  do  you,  in  ordinary  conversation,  and  as  well  in  your 
scientific  terminology,  talk  about  things  in  the  way  to  imply 
such  a  real  subject  for  all  the  qualities,  relations,  and  changes, 
in  the  particular  things  and  in  the  world  of  things?  What  is 
the  meaning  of  this  "  It,"  as  you  employ  it  ?  Why  do  you 
speak  of  "  that-which,"  "  whose-is,"  and  pride  yourself  upon 
the  ability  to  determine  more  precisely  and  comprehensively 
than  the  plain  man  can,  the  qualities,  relations,  changes, — in 
space  and  in  time, — that  are  "  of  "  the  real  things. 

And  now  when  we  hark  back  to  a  certain  point  reached  in 
the  recent  hunt  after  a  satisfying  theory  of  knowledge,  we  get 
a  suggestion,  at  least,  of  where  to  look  in  order  to  discover 
the  hiding-place  of  this  mystery  which  confronts  at  the  very 
threshold  any  attempt  to  discover  a  satisfying  theory  of  reality. 
Is  there  any  one  of  the  so-called  categories  which  may  be 
connected  with  the  subject-Thing,  with  this  It  of  which  all  is 
affirmed,  by  a  special  kind  of  copula?  Does  any  one  of  them, 
at  least  at  first  blush,  seem  to  be  nearer  of  kin  to  the  very 
substance,  to  the  real  essence,  to  the  "  bone  and  marrow,"  of 
the  Thing?  Such  a  predicate,  it  might  then  be  said,  is  It; 
instead  of  being  content  with  saying  that  It  lias  such  a  predi- 
cate, or  that  such  a  predicate  belongs  to  It.  At  present  let 
the  experiment  be  made  with  the  category — or  rather  with  the 
complex  conception — of  causation.  And  surely,  it  seems  to 
satisfy  both  the  demands  of  the  plain  man's  experience,  as 
well  as  the  severer  demands  of  the  particular  sciences,  to  say 


METAPHYSICS,  AS  A  THEORY  OF  REALITY       169 

that  things  are  really  causes;  whereas  it  does  not  seem  satis- 
factory to  express  the  datum  of  experience  if  the  uncouth 
statement  is  made  that  causation  is  a  specific  quality  pos- 
sessed, as  are  color,  size,  weight,  etc.,  by  the  particular  thing. 
Indeed,  both  physics  and  psychology  unite  to  resolve  all  these 
specific  qualities,  as  far  as  they  belong  to  any  particular  thing, 
into  the  various  forms  of  the  causal  activities  of  the  thing.  To 
do  something  to  other  things,  and  to  have  something  done  to 
it  by  other  things,  would  seem  then  to  be  tlie  very  essence  of 
tlie  reality  which  is  ascribed  to  all  things  that  are  causes  in 
the  actual  transactions  of  the  One  World. 

The  variety  of  ways  in  which  particular  things  are  causes 
determines  their  qualities,  and  explains  the  changes  in  them- 
selves and  other  things,  under  the  infinite  variety  of  relations 
which  their  causal  activity  assumes.  This  is  as  true  of  atoms, 
and  electrons,  and  ions,  as  it  is  of  the  more  massive  substances 
to  wliicli,  as  subjects,  are  assigned  the  more  easily  observable 
qualities,  changes  and  relations,  of  ordinary  things.  When 
the  causes  are  thought  of  as  operative  in  space,  and  under 
measurable  relations  of  space,  and  in  degrees  that  are  also 
measurable  by  movements  in  space,  it  is  necessary  to  regard 
the  things  as  "  occupying  space,"  or  as  "  posited  "  in  space ; 
and  in  somewhat  similar  manner,  things  are  known  as  causes 
operative  in  time  and  during  longer  or  shorter  times. 

The  analysis  of  the  nature  and  meaning  of  the  cognitive  act 
gives  the  clue  to  the  origin,  nature,  and  meaning,  of  the  con- 
ception of  things  as  causes.  In  every  cognitive  act,  the  knower 
is  a  will,  and  knows  itself  as  a  will;  in  every  cognitive  act 
whose  object  is  some  Thing,  the  knower  knows  that  thing  as 
actually  or  conceivably  being,  what  by  self-consciousness  he 
knows  himself  to  be, — namely,  a  cause,  as  will,  but  not  his  will ; 
an  expression  to  him  of  another  will  than  his  own.  Such,  at  any 
rate,  is  the  preliminary  view  of  the  solution  of  this  problem, 
which  may  be  defended  both  by  the  psychology  of  knowledge, 
and  also  by  the  analysis  of  that  conception  of  reality  which 


170  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

belongs  to  every  meanest  thing.  That  there  would  be 
no  real  selves  and  no  real  things  for  us,  were  we  not  made 
aware  to  ourselves  and  they  made  aware  to  us,  as  causes,  act- 
ing and  reacting,  reciprocally  determining  the  changes  in  the 
states  and  relations  of  one  another,  may  be  asserted  as  a  pro- 
logue to  a  system  of  metaphysics,  which  does  not  easily  admit 
of  denial. 


CHAPTER  IX 

NATURE  AND  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  SO-CALLED 
"  CATEGORIES  " 

There  has  been  from  time  immemorial  a  difference  of  opin- 
ion as  to  the  nature  and  the  number  of  the  necessary  forms  of 
human  knowledge;  and  as  well  as  to  the  precise  way  in  which 
philosophy  ought  to  discover  and  to  criticize  them.  The  scep- 
tical and  agnostic  positions  toward  this  problem  of  meta- 
physics have  already  been  sufficiently  discussed.  It  ought,  how- 
ever, to  be  recalled  in  this  connection  that  any  proposal  to  criti- 
cize the  categories  cannot  properly  imply  that  it  is  possible 
to  look  on  them  with  a  critical  eye  from  a  wholly  outside  point 
of  view.  In  criticizing  them,  the  mind  is  compelled  to  accept 
them;  in  criticizing  the  criticism  of  others,  the  mind  employs 
them  yet  again.  It  is  the  business  of  systematic  metaphysics, 
in  spite  of  the  inherent  difficulties,  to  do  what  human  minds 
well  can  toward  harmonizing  the  different,  and  sometimes  seem- 
ingly conflicting  claims  of  those  forms  of  all  cognition;  and, 
also,  to  expound  and  amplify  tlieir  significance  as  bearing  upon 
the  ultimate  aim  of  metaphysics,  which  is  to  frame  a  tenable, 
consistent,  and  satisfying  theory  of  reality. 

But  how  many,  and  precisely  what,  are  those  forms  of  human 
cognition,  of  man's  way  of  knowing  all  things  and  all  selves  as 
real,  which  deserve  to  be  classed  among  the  categories?  In 
his  investigations  into  the  nature  of  human  thought,  of  argu- 
ment, and  of  proof,  Aristotle,  the  founder  of  logic  in  its  Occi- 
dental development,  constructed  an  elaborate  doctrine  of  con- 
cepts. The  fixing  of  concepts  or  definition  (  bfuaiio^  ),  he 
held,  rests  in  part  on  direct  knowledge,  which  must  be  empha- 
sized by  induction   (so  Zeller).     In  order  to  attain  a  correct 

171 


172  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  exhaustive  conception  of  any  generic  object, — the  defini- 
tion of  a  class, — the  mind  must  proceed  logically.  Since  there 
are  various  points  of  view  from  which  things  may  be  contem- 
plated, and  since  there  is  no  one  concept  which  comprehends 
all  things  under  one  head,  it  is  necessary  to  discover  the  "  main 
classes  of  assertions  "  which  men,  knowingly,  make  about  things. 
Aristotle,  in  the  passage  where  he  gives  the  most  definite  treat- 
ment to  the  determining  of  these  "  assertive  conceptions,"  the 
so-called  "categories"  {Karrjyopiac),  enumerates  ten.  They 
are  the  following:  Substance,  quantity,  quality,  relation,  where, 
when,  place,  possession,  activity,  passivity.  "  He  is,"  says 
Zeller,  "  convinced  of.  the  completeness  of  this  scheme,  but  no 
definite  principle  is  to  be  found  for  its  origin."  It  is  the  cate- 
gories, however,  which  form  the  subject  for  investigation  in  the 
"  first  philosophy,"  or  metaphysics,  of  Aristotle. 

In  other  enumerations  of  the  fundamental  forms  of  all  hu- 
man conceiving  of  things,  the  great  Greek  thinker  does  not  ad- 
here strictly  to  this  list  of  ten.  It  is  evident  to  the  most 
superficial  criticism  that  these  ten  are  not  by  any  means  all  of 
the  same  rank;  neither  have  they  all  the  same  value,  whether 
for  a  theory  of  knowledge,  or  for  a  metaphysics  which  shall  be 
a  tenable  theory  of  reality.  The  first  four  are  the  more  im- 
portant; among  them  the  category  of  Substance  stands  pri- 
mary and  supreme.  For  in  it  is  concealed  the  mystery  of  ex- 
istence,— as  has  already  been  discovered  by  an  analysis  of  the 
terms  under  which  every  real  Thing  is  known.  To  be  "  sub- 
stantial "  and  to  be  real  are,  in  popular  language,  the  same. 

To  the  excessive  zeal  for  a  four-sided  regularity,  which 
amounted  to  a  delusive  "  pedagogical  primness,"  of  Kant,  the 
looseness  and  vacillation  of  Aristotle  with  regard  to  the  number 
and  significance  of  the  categories,  seemed  intolerable.  In  mak- 
ing out  his  own  list,  however,  Kant  adhered  in  the  main  to 
the  divisions  of  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  judgment. 
Only  he  added  two  more  to  the  Aristotelian  catalogue  of  the 
necessary  forms  of  judging  faculty.     Thus  he  thought  he  had 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       173 

secured  a  demonstrable  list  of  the  universal  and  external  forms 
of  the  functioning  of  all  human  judgment  in  objective  cogni- 
tion. A  table;  four  classes;  three  in  a  class;  three  times  four, 
i.  e.,  twelve,  and  no  more  or  less, — such  in  number  are  the 
Kantian  categories. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  the  discussion  of  this  subject 
between  Aristotle  and  Kant,  or  between  Kant  and  the  most 
recent  contribution  to  its  settlement,  in  order  to  show  how 
uncertain  are  both  the  method  of  a  priori  demonstration  in 
dependence  on  an  abstract  logical  scheme,  and  also  the  method 
of  a  sort  of  off-hand  picking-up  of  the  categories.  The  diffi- 
culty accompanying  either  of  these  methods — or,  indeed,  the 
use  of  any  method — for  the  construction  of  a  complete  list  of 
the  categories,  is  chiefly  due  to  these  two  facts  of  man's  ex- 
perience with  them.  And,  first,  however  we  may  wish  to  define 
their  essential  nature  we  can  neither  assign  to  them  all  the 
same  rank  nor  the  same  essential  significance  for  the  growth 
of  human  knowledge.  We  cannot  prevent  their  overlapping 
and  mixing  up,  as  it  were,  one  with  another.  When  the  effort 
is  made  to  harmonize  them,  by  bringing  them  under  the  terms 
of  any  abstract  principle,  the  effort  seems  to  add  to  this  con- 
fusion ;  although  every  concrete  existence  is,  essentially  con- 
sidered, a  harmonious  realization  of  them  all.  For  example, 
the  category  of  relation  appears  to  dominate,  or  mix  in  with, 
all  the  others.  Spaces,  times,  qualities,  quantities,  notions  and 
all  kinds  of  changes,  forces,  forms,  and  laws — all  are  related 
in  manifold  ways.  Only  by  the  actualization  of  these  relations 
is  the  World  made  One,  out  of  an  infinity  of  related  beings, 
conditions,  and  activities.  If  it  is  held  that  the  mystery  of  real 
being  is  concealed  in  the  word  Substance,  or  that  the  essence 
of  every  Thing  consists  in  its  being  a  Cause,  it  is  necessary  to 
add  that  qualities  are  known  only  as  related  to  substances,  and 
causes  only  as  related,  on  the  one  hand,  to  their  causes,  and,  on 
the  other,  to  their  effects.  Even  relations  may  be  related. 
Indeed,  the  whole  world  is  known  to  science  and  to  ordinary 


174  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

experience  as  made  up  of  real  beings,  composed  of  related  ele- 
ments, and  always  in  relation,  as  wholes,  to  otlier  real  beings. 
In  saying  this  we  are  not  indulging  ourselves  in  abstractions 
of  an  amusing  or  startling  character  and  calculated  to  in- 
crease the  popular  disgust  with  metaphysics;  we  are  trying  to 
express  in  the  language  of  every-day  life  what  every  "  plain 
man  "  knows  to  be  true  of  every  thing  of  which  he  has  daily 
experience. 

A  second  difficulty  arises,  whenever  the  attempt  is  made  to 
enumerate  and  describe  the  categories,  from  the  nature  of  the 
relation  which  they  sustain  to  human  experience.  This  rela- 
tion is  such  that  in  the  very  effort  to  think  about  them  clearly, 
—  not  to  say  describe  them  in  detail  or  define  them  with  com- 
mendable brevity  and  accuracy, — the  conception  of  each  one 
seems  to  involve  at  once  many,  if  not  all  of  the  others.  Indeed, 
this  belongs  to  their  very  nature  as  categories,  and  to  the  nor- 
mal relation  which  they  all  sustain  to  experience.  If  it  were 
possible  to  isolate  any  one  of  these  forms  of  cognition,  or  to 
reduce  it  to  some  other  forni,  then  it  would  properly  lose  its 
place  altogether  among  the  so-called  categories.  If  time  and  its 
relations,  for  example,  could  be  reduced  to  space  and  its  rela- 
tions, then  the  one  of  the  two  which  submitted  to  this  reduc- 
tion, would  drop  out  of  the  list  of  the  absolutely  necessary 
forms  of  the  cognition  of  things.  If  all  relations  were  those  of 
quality,  and  there  were  no  relations  of  number,  then,  of  course, 
there  could  be  no  reality  to  which  mathematics  could  be  ap- 
plied. Or,  the  rather — to  turn  the  statement  about — then  there 
would  be  no  mathematics,  because  there  would  be  no  things  to 
measure  and  enumerate, — in  fact,  no  things  at  all. 

From  this  it  follows  that  none  of  the  categories  can  be  dis- 
pensed with  in  any  attempt  to  describe  what  his  experience  re- 
veals to  man  with  regard  to  the  essential  nature  of  every  con- 
crete reality.  But  the  fact  that  the  validity  of  these  forms  of 
knowledge  is  assumed,  or  presupposed,  as  of  necessity  in  every 
cognitive   experience   does  not  contradict   the  other  truth  of 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       175 

fact,  that  they  are  also  all  illustrated  and  conliriiicd  by  the 
growth  of  knowledge.  With  the  growth  of  knowledge,  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  race,  comes  an  increasing  clearness  and 
an  enlarging  confidence  in  the  validity,  for  reality,  of  the  human 
way  of  knowing  the  world.  And  here  is  the  supreme  example 
of  the  truth  that  man  knows  the  real  world — that  it  is,  and 
what  it  is — not  by  sitting  apart  from  it  and  reflecting  (if,  in- 
deed, such  a  thing  were  possible),  but  by  living  in  the  midst  of 
it  and  by  actual  dealings  with  its  concrete  realities.  For  the 
growth  of  knowledge  is  like  that  of  a  tree  in  a  soil  which  is  en- 
riched not  only  by  the  gifts  of  the  surrounding  earth  and  the 
over-arching  heavens,  but  even  by  its  own  foliage  and  dead 
branches. 

The  further  work  of  metaphysical  philosophy  with  the  so- 
called  categories  should  consist  in  the  effort  to  interpret  their 
significance  with  a  view  to  establishing  a  theory  as  to  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  all  that  is  called  Eeal; — or,  in  other  words,  an 
attempt  to  understand  the  Being  of  the  World  as  it  is  mani- 
fest to  the  human  mind  through  its  growing  knowledge  of  the 
nature  and  relations  of  the  concrete  realities  of  this  One  World. 
Here,  in  this  problem,  as  in  all  of  its  problems,  philosophy 
strives  by  reflective  thinking  to  rise  to  the  Universal  from 
firm  points  of  standing  in  the  fields  of  the  particular 
sciences.  * 

If  now  speculation  keeps  close  to  the  truths  of  human  ex- 
perience with  concrete  real  existences,  it  may  make  three  pre- 
liminary observations  of  a  metaphysical  character.^ 

The,  as  yet,  imperfect  analysis  of  the  categories,  considered 
as  those  fundamental  and  irreducible  forms  of  knowledge 
under  which  all  men  recognize  the  nature  of  concrete  realities 
— real  selves  and  real  things — establishes  these  truths  of  uni- 
versal experience.     First :     "  Reality  is  always,  primarily  con- 

1  The  next  following  pages,  when  quoted,  are  from  the  author's 
"A  Theory  of  Reality"  (Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1899),  where  a 
detailed  treatment  of  the  categories  is  given,  pp.  57-393. 


176  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

sidered,  a  datum  of  fact;  it  is,  first  of  all,  that  which  is  known 
as  being  in  sense-perception  or  self-consciousness."  In  every 
single  cognitive  experience  of  every  human  being,  reality  is 
a  datum,  is  given,  is  there;  and  it  is  present  with  all  that 
force  to  compel  conviction  which  the  satisfactions  of  the  in- 
tellect and  the  exigencies  of  the  practical  life  demand.  From 
this  immediate  datum  of  experience,  all  our  reasoned  knowl- 
edge about  things,  remote  in  time  and  space,  issues  forth;  and 
to  it,  for  the  testing  of  its  validity,  it  is  ever  compelled  to  re- 
turn again.  Second:  "Eeality  is  always  an  actor  or  agent. 
Dead  and  do-less  things  are  not  real.  We  may,  indeed,  make  a 
sort  of  abstraction,  of  all  particular,  conceivable  forms  of  acting 
and  doing,  and  may  then  try  in  imagination  to  convert  this 
bare  potentiality  into  a  real  existence.  But  this  very  poten- 
tiality itself  is  like  a  slumbering  lion — acting  in  dream-life, 
and  ready,  at  the  first  prick  of  the  stimulus,  to  leap  forth  in 
the  full  strength  of  its  awakening.  It  is  the  half-consciousness 
of  this  truth  which  makes  much  of  the  physics  of  the  day  so 
obscure  and  provoking,  and  yet  so  tenacious  in  its  conception 
of  '  potential  energy.'  And  is  not .  chemistry  virtually  com- 
pelled— and  biology  as  well — to  pack  the  atoms  full  of  some- 
times latent  and  sometimes  active  potencies?  But  what  are 
masses,  molecules,  atoms,  ions,  electrons,  in  reality,  when  they 
have  wkoUy  ceased  to  be  actors  or  agents;  when  in  respect  of 
the  entire  sum  of  all  their  qualities  and  changing  relations, 
they  are  merely  potential?  Just  nothing  at  all."  Eeally  to  be 
in  space,  to  have  energy  of  position,  or  as  it  is  significantly 
said,  "to  occupy  space,"  they  must  continue  to  be  self-ex- 
istent causes,  or  centres  of  force,  manifoldly  related  in  an 
active  manner,  with  other  self-existent  causes,  or  centres  of 
force.  But,  third :  "  Eeality  is  always  connection  according 
to  some  law."  And  in  order  to  constitute  a  valid  claim  to 
be  real,  this  connection  cannot  be  one  of  thoughts,  or  ideas 
only;  it  must  be  a  connection  established  in  fact, — a  con- 
nection, recognized  indeed,  or  reasoned  out,  by  the  mind  in 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       177 

terms  of  order  and  so-called  law,  but  a  connection  immanent 
in,  or  actually  existent  between,  the  things  themselves. 

If  now,  in  view  of  these  truths  of  fact,  the  question  is  raised, 
how  they  are  made  possible  and  made  full  of  meaning,  some 
additional  clue  may  be  obtained  to  a  tenable  and  illuminat- 
ing theory  of  reality.  Let  us  in  a  more  general  and  of  neces- 
sity somewhat  more  abstract  way,  endeavor  to  realize  what  is 
implied  in  this  "  harmonizing  of  the  categories  "  by  every  con- 
crete real  existence.  We  may  then,  perhaps,  hope  to, approach 
more  confidently  the  ultimate  metaphysical  problem :  How 
shall  the  Being  of  the  World,  be  interpreted  in  the  large; — 
and  in  such  manner  as  to  justify  the  growth  of  that  knowl- 
edge of  the  race  which  affirms  it  to  be  an  intelligible  and  or- 
derly system  of  real  existences — of  selves  and  of  things? 

The  plain  man,  the  man  of  science,  the  reflective  thinker, — 
all  believe  in  some  kind  of  a  real  world.  Something  is  real; 
such  is  the  metaphysical  datum  which  all  knowers,  from  every 
point  of  view,  accept  as  given  in  an  irresistible  way,  in  every 
cognitive  experience.  By  the  growth  of  ordinary  experience, 
but  much  more  richly  and  convincingly  by  the  development 
of  the  particular  sciences,  a  kind  of  ideal  unity,  a  oneness  of 
order  and  law,  is  ascribed  to  this  "  Something-that-is-real." 
All  individual  selves  and  things  are  known  the  better,  the  more 
knowledge  grows,  as  actually  existing  in,  and  as  contributing 
to,  the  reality  of  this  One  World.  Let  this  larger  and  compre- 
hensive Something  be  called  by  the  term,  "  Being  of  the 
World."  It  is  a  vague  term,  designedly  vague.  Therefore, 
metaphysics  desires  to  do  something  more  toward  clearing-up 
and  interpreting  its  original  vagueness.  In  this  effort,  which 
is  commendable  whether  it  can  be  made  successful  or  not, 
let  a  return  be  made  again  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  it 
became  necessary  to  notice  the  particularity,  the  difference  in 
values,  and  yet  the  necessary  nature  and  harmony  of  all  the 
so-called  categories. 

"  The  truth  may  be  enforced  by  taking  as  a  point  of  start- 


178  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ing  any  one  of  the  so-called  categories :  Being  in  Space  shall 
we  say  ?  But  hy  heing  in  space — really  and  not  merely  in 
imagination — we  must  understand  some  particular  Thing  occu- 
pying some  particular  portion  of  space.  For  it  is  not  space  as 
a  mere  abstraction,  which  is  to  be  considered,  but  space  as  a 
form  of  knowledge, — that  is,  space  as  it  is  known,  in  applica- 
tion to  real  things.  But  nothing  can  be  known,  or  thought  of, 
as  really  in  space,  which  does  not  define  itself  as  '  here '  rather 
than  '  there.'  Its  being  at  all  in  space,  as  all  real  things 
actually  are,  involves  its  particularity;  to  be  nowhere  in  par- 
ticular in  space,  but  everywhere  in  general,  or  to  be  all  over 
space,  is  to  be  unknowable  and  unthinkable  in  terms  of  this 
category  (The  conception  of  ether  as  a  continuum  filling  all 
space  is  not  in  the  least  exempted  from  this  same  necessity  of 
its  being  known  at  all).  But  this  particularity  which  every 
real  Thing  has,  as  a  '  being  in  space,'  involves  its  relation  to 
other  beings  that  are  also  in  space." 

To  be  a  particular  Thing  related  to  other  real  beings  in 
space,  implies  the  possibility  of  movement,  of  changes  in  this 
spatial  relation;  and  so  of  measurable  changes  in  the  size  and 
distances  of  particular  things.  Thus  the  path  which  lies  open  be- 
tween the  categories  leads  at  once  from  the  thought  of  being  re- 
lated in  space  to  the  thought  of  clumge.  And  a  particular, 
recognizable  set  of  qualities  is  necessary  in  order  that  any 
thing  may  be  known  as  the  same  real  Thing,  although  it  has 
moved  and  so  changed  its  position  and  relations  in  space.  All 
that  identification  of  realities,  personal  and  inipersonable,  which 
makes  not  only  science  possible  but  any  real  living  practicable, 
depends  upon  some  at  least  relatively  permanent  possession  of 
a  set,  or  complex  of  qualities,  in  which  the  particular  character 
of  every  real  being  is  defined  and  conserved.  If  every  thing 
changed  indefinitely,  not  only  science,  but  business  and  society 
would  be  impossible.  But  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the 
changes  of  position,  relations  in  space,  measurable  s[)atial  qual- 
ities, and  other  qualities,  can  take  place,  and  yet  the  particular 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       179 

Thing  or  individual  Self  maintain  its  claim  to  a  real  existence, 
there  is  no  test  possible  except  that  of  experience.  And  this 
test  in  most  cases  of  the  different  classes  of  things  is  the  test 
of  practical  expediency.  The  same  remark  applies  to  the 
grouping,  or  aspects,  of  the  particular  Thing  which  affords  the 
means  for  both  practical  and  scientific  identification.  For 
the  mathematician  or  the  tradesman,  the  categories  of  quality 
and  number  are  most  impressive.  For  the  student  of  physics 
and  chemistry,  for  the  machinist  and  manufacturer,  the  same 
categories  with  the  added  conceptions  of  causation  and  force. 
The  way  in  which  every  particular  thing  attempts  to  main- 
tain its  real  existence  in  a  world  of  particular  things  by  mani- 
festing the  peculiar  complex  of  qualities  and  forces  which  en- 
able men  to  identify  it,  leads  the  thought  irresistibly  to  the 
actuality  of  order  and  law,  as  immanent  in  the  Being  of  the 
World.  No  particular  thing  succeeds  forever  in  accomplish- 
ing this  task.  It  maintains  its  particular  existence  in  reality, 
only  for  a  time,  and  for  that  time  only  fitfully  and  irregularly. 
The  conception  of  the  older  chemistry  and  physics  was  that 
of  an  indestructible  and  eternally  unchangeable  atom,  out  of 
the  combination  of  which  destructible  and  changeable  particu- 
lar things  were  constantly  being  made.  Even  atoms  are  now 
thought  of  as  arising  and  passing  away.  Put  to  preserve  the 
Being  of  the  World  from  collapsing  in  ruin,  or  from  relapsing 
into  chaos,  the  changes  in  relations,  quantities,  and  qualities, 
of  the  particular  things  must  observe  some  order,  must  conform 
to  some  law.  This  is  as  true  of  the  explosions  of  masses  of 
dynamite,  or  of  the  earthquake  that  wrecks  Messina,  as  it  is 
of  the  movements  of  the  planets  in  the  solar  system,  or 
of  the  combinations  and  separations  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen 
in  the  making  and  dissipation  of  a  few  drops  of  water.  But 
it  has  already  been  seen,  in  the  attempt  to  expose  the  meaning 
of  the  logical  principle  of  identity  and  non-contradiction,  when 
applied  to  the  knowledge  of  real  Things :  A  mwy  change  into 
A^y  /!%  yi^    .    .    .    A";  but  it  miLst  not  change  into  B^,  5-, 


180  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

J5'  .  .  .  B°.  And  yet  for  all  particular  things, — wo  repeat — 
only  experience  can  determine  the  precise  character  of  the 
series  of  changes  through  which  any  particular  Thing  may  run. 
The  complex  of  so-called  laws  which  regulate  these  series  we, 
in  our  ignorance,  call  the  "  nature  "  of  the  thing. 

The  Being  of  the  World,  then,  so  far  as  it  can  be  compre- 
hended in  its  totality,  is  a  system  of  particular  beings  each  one 
of  which  gets  its  reality  in  the  system,  under  limitations  of 
time  and  space,  by  a  sort  of  participation  in  the  categories. 
It  is  a  particular  real,  by  virtue  of  its  being  one  among  the 
infinite  number  of  realities  which  come  into  existence,  and  pass 
out  of  existence,  within  the  Unity  of  the  One  World.  To  turn 
this  statement  about :  The  Unity  which  a  systematic  meta- 
physics discovers  in  Eeality  is,  so  to  speak,  the  bond  which 
brings  all  the  particular  concrete  realities  into  an  orderly  and 
law-abiding  system.  And  now  the  inquiry  would  seem  to  be: 
What  is  the  nature  of  such  a  bond  as  is  competent  to  secure 
the  unity  that  we  know  belongs  to  the  one  real  world  of  human 
experience  ? 

The  application  of  such  words  as  Bond,  Connection,  Sys« 
tem,  Unity, — all  of  which  involve  ideals  of  order  and  law, — 
to  the  entire  collection  of  particular  real  beings,  both  selves 
and  things,  suggests  a  further  advance  in  the  problem  of  meta- 
physics. For  these  words  imply  that  all  these  particular  real 
beings  which  constitute  the  individuals  for  this  Universal,  what- 
ever be  their  natures,  somehow  actively  co-operate  in  that  larger 
Nature  which  includes  them  all,  and  which  must  be  attributed 
to  the  Being  of  the  World.  Some  Force,  or  Causative  In- 
fluence, unifies  and  systematizes  the  particular  beings;  and  to 
unify  or  systematize  is  to  connect  together  under  the  terms  of 
some  Idea,  Now  it  is  true  that  all  the  achievements  of  the 
particular  sciences,  since  man  began  to  observe,  to  experiment, 
and  to  think,  have  by  no  means  mastered  the  intricacies  or  dis- 
closed the  mysteries  of  this  system  of  real  beings.  It  is  even 
true  that  individual  beings  and  single  events — however  numer- 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       181 

ous  or  frequently  repeated  those  beings  and  events  may  be — 
still  resist  explanation  in  terms  that  apply  to  the  system  in 
general.  To  speak  in  abstract  terms,  these  realities  appear  thus 
far  to  refuse  to  conform  to  the  ideals  which  science  believes  it 
has  acquired  the  right  to  apply  to  the  world  as  a  whole.  Their 
natures  run,  in  some  respects  at  least,  contrary  to  Nature  in 
the  large.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  only  as  they  are  connected 
with  or  bound  to  other  realities,  of  whose  law-abiding  natures 
man  has  some  assured  knowledge,  that  these  beings  of  "  the 
contrary  mind,"  these  events  which  constitute  exceptions  to 
the  known  order  and  the  accepted  laws  of  their  fellow  be- 
ings, can  become  known  to  man  at  all.  Without  conform- 
ing to  the  laws  of  light,  they  could  not  be  known  to  man  by 
sight;  without  conforming  to  the  principle  of  gravitation, 
their  weight  could  not  be  measured  or  calculated,  etc.,  etc. 
And  without  being  possessed  of  all  the  categories,  they  could 
not  be  known,  or  imagined,  or  thought  about,  as  real.  It  is 
also  a  most  significant  fact  of  the  historical  development  of  all 
the  sciences  that  they  grow  chiefly  by  noting,  accepting,  and 
explaining  the  apparent  exceptions  to  those  previously  exist- 
ing conceptions,  hypotheses,  and  accepted  laws.  Thus  a  system 
of  knowledges  that  corresponds  better  to  the  system  of  realities 
is  obtained.  But  more  and  more  tenaciously  does  the  human 
mind,  not  only  entertain  as  a  pleasing  conceit  but  insist  upon 
as  a  presupposition  supported  ever  more  confidently  by  the 
growth  of  experience,  the  conception  of  an  infinite  number  of 
particular  beings  somehow  connected  into  the  Unity  of  One 
World.  And  no  more  senseless  trifling  with  the  most  assured 
results  of  human  experience  is  possible  than  is  involved  in  the 
attempt  to  minimize  the  content,  and  depreciate  the  value,  of 
this  conception  of  the  World's  Unity.  Scientifically  and  philo- 
sophically considered,  a  "  pluralistic  universe  "  is  an  absurdity. 
Among  the  categories  there  are  three  which  are  involved  in 
the  most  important  ways  in  man's  expanding  conception  of 
the  Being  of  the  World.     These  are  the  categories  of  Relation, 


182  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Causation,  and  Law.  As  an  infinity  of  agents,  or  real  causes, 
actually  related,  under  effectual  ideas,  or  laws,  the  world-sys- 
tem of  things  and  selves  is  constituted.  Particular  realities 
that  are  agents,  or  causes,  related,  not  merely  subjectively,  or 
in  man's  processes  of  thinking,  but  actually,  according  to  ideas 
that  are  effectual, — such  are  the  prime  conditions  of  the  en- 
vironment of  which  human  beings  are  a  part.  As  realizing  to 
the  full  these  conditions,  the  Universe  is  known  to  the  mind 
of  man. 

What,  then,  is  it  "to  be  really  related  "?  Of  all  metaphysi- 
cal inquiries,  this  is  in  some  respects  the  most  quizzical  and 
the  most  puzzling.  The  saying  which  has  been  attributed  to 
different  authors  in  philosophy  is  indeed  not  without  signifi- 
cance: "Relation  is  the  mother  of  all  the  categories."  Mani- 
festly we  cannot  hope  to  define,  or  even  to  describe  this  con- 
ception which  underlies  all  knowledge,  without  making  use  of 
it  in  a  form  already  sufficiently  clear.  For  all  definition  and 
description  are  stated  in  judgments;  and  all  judgments  are 
achievements  of  relating  faculty.  From  the  subjective  point 
of  view,  then,  since  all  knowledge  involves  judgment,  and  all 
judging  is  relating,  there  can  be  no  object  of  knowledge  which 
is  not  related — both  to  the  knower  and  to  other  objects.  But 
it  is  not  with  the  theory  of  judgment  or  of  knowledge  that  we 
are  now  concerned.  Theories  of  knowledge  which  would  cut 
knowledge  off  from  reality,  or  reduce  the  categories  to  merely 
subjective  forms,  have  already  been  finally  rejected.  They 
cannot  be  taken  back  into  our  confidence.  And  to  admit  the 
subjective  origin  of  the  category  of  relation  does  not  explain 
satisfactorily  its  title  to  be  called  "  the  mother  of  all  the  cate- 
gories." 

The  metaphysical  formula,  or  ontological  doctrine,  which  cor- 
responds to  what  has  already  been  said  concerning  the  subjective 
origin  of  relation,  may  be  stated  as  follows:  All  things 
are  known  to  be  actually  related.  Ivcal  things  stand  to  one 
another   in   actual   relations,   and   not  merely   in   relations   of 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "CATEGORIES"       183 

thought  ciilniinating  in  judgment.  These  actual  rehitions  are 
of  two  sorts;  relations  to  the  knower  as  objects  of  knowledge, 
and  relations  to  one  another  as  existent  together  in  the  space 
and  time  of  the  One  World.  As  to  the  actuality  of  one  of 
these  two  sorts  of  relations,  it  would  seem  that  no  scepticism 
could  be  complete.  That  the  object  is  ac'tually  related  to  the 
subject,  in  every  completed  act  of  knowledge,  it  is  impossible 
to  deny.  The  actualizing  of  this  relation  is  the  fact  of  knowl- 
edge itself.  If,  however,  the  actuality  of  this  relation,  and  the 
real  nature  of  the  two  beings  thus  related,  is  confined  to  the 
time  and  the  content  of  the  bare  fact  of  knowledge, — as  the  ex- 
treme theory  of  subjectivism  would  have  us  believe, — then  knowl- 
edge is  not  only  vitiated  at  the  start,  but  is  rendered  void  of 
truth  and  absurd.  Then  there  is  no  real  science;  then  there  are 
no  foundations  for  the  ethical  and  social  order.  For  science, 
and  morality,  and  the  social  order,  require  the  actual  exist- 
ence of  other  selves,  with  whom  the  individual  Ego  may  come 
into  intellectual,  ethical,  and  social  relations.  When  this  re- 
quirement is  once  admitted;  then  actually  existent  relations 
between  real  beings  are  also  admitted.  And  if  the  distinction 
between  truth  and  error  be  held  vital  in  the  commerce  between 
different  intellects;  then  the  distinction  between  merely  sub- 
jective relations  and  actual  relations  becomes  a  matter  of  fact. 
That  is  to  say,  it  has  become  matter  of  fact  that  the  intellect 
of  A  either  does,  or  does  not,  relate  B  and  C  to  itself,  and  to 
each  other,  as  A,  B  and  C  are  actually  related. 

Nor  can  the  claims  of  this  distinction  {i.  e.,  between 
merely  subjective  relations  and  the  actual  relations  of  real 
beings)  be  arrested  at  the  present  point.  For  if  knowers  were, 
by  their  knowing  activity  to  create  all  actual  relations,  and 
if  things  were  not  themselves  actually  related ;  then  these 
knowers  would  belong  to  a  world  entirely  apart  from  the  world 
of  things.  Eeality  must,  therefore,  be  conceived  of  as  actually  a 
system  of  relations.  And  all  attempts  to  sink  the  actuality  of 
the  relations  in  an  abstract  conception  of  some  unrelated,  and 


184  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

therefore,  unknown  and  unknowable  Being  of  the  World,  work 
the  same  destruction  to  man's  knowledge  as  that  which  is 
wrought  b}'  a  thorough-going  subjectivism.  To  this  thought 
there  will  be  need  to  return  when  considering  the  use  which 
philosophy  has  often  made  of  such  conceptions  as  are  hidden 
in  the  terms :  "  The  Absolute,"  "  The  World-Ground,"  "  The 
Unknowable,"  etc. 

In  the  system,  or  unity  of  the  world,  things  are  therefore 
really  related,  and  not  merely  related  by  human  imagination 
of  them,  or  thought  about  them.  The  World  is  hnown — not 
merely  imagined  or  thought  about, — as  a  system  of  real  beings, 
actually  related.  In  other  words,  "  It "  is  known  as  self-re- 
lated and  not  merely  as  having  its  relations  forced  upon  it  by 
man.  This  is  not  very  far  from  saying  that  really  to  be  re- 
lated is  really  to  be  as  I  know  myself  to  be — a  systematic  and 
unitary  thought-being.  Or,  to  go  still  further  and  say:  A 
System  of  Relations,  conceived  of  as  a  totality  and  complete 
in  itself,  can  only  be  actualized  in  terms  of  a  Self.  To  this 
conclusion,  at  least  in  a  tentative  and  anticipatory  way,  we 
have  argued  ourselves  into  assent,  somewhat  as  follows :  "  The 
entire  collection  of  concrete  real  beings — things  and  selves,  ac- 
tually known  or  only  ideally  conceivable — is  known  or  con- 
ceived of  as  m/er-related.  Only  thus  can  any  one  of  these  real 
beings  be  known;  only  thus  can  the  collection  be  conceived  of 
as  a  system,  as  constituting  One. World.  What  now  must  this 
category  (namely,  that  of  'Eelation')  mean,  when  we  yield 
to  the  compulsion  which  the  inherent  constitution  of  all  hu- 
man knowledge  imposes  upon  us,  and  apply  it  to  the  collec- 
tion of  beings — to  the  One  World.  Nothing  different  from 
what  we  have  already  found  it  to  mean.  For  the  categories 
are  not  to  be  threatened  or  coaxed.  They  do  not  change  their 
nature,  when  applied  to  the  Nature  of  the  World — not  even 
if  these  words  be  spelled  with  capital  letters.  Neither  do  they 
bow  to  the  demands  of  the  mind  that  aspires  altogether  to 
escape  their  limitations,  and  begins  to  talk  of  '  the  Absolute,' 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       185 

or  of  God,  in  terms  to  which  these  limitations  necessarily  apply. 
On  the  one  hand,  then,  we  are  justified  in  aflfirming  the  Self- 
like cliaracter  of  the  conception  which  ^\^e  apply  to  that  Being 
of  tlie  World,  in  which  they  all  '  live  and  move  and  have 
their  being.'  " 

Man's  jioint  of  view  from  which  to  know  each  concrete  being 
as  related  to  others,  and  as  well  from  which  to  construct  a 
theory  of  reality  that  shall  be  statable  in  terms  of  knowledge  is, 
of  course,  "  anthropomorphic."  From  this  point  of  view  of 
the  Self,  the  entire  System  of  Relations  must  be  regarded  as 
having  a  Unity  analogous  to  that  which  the  Self  knows  itself 
to  have;  all  relations  appear  as  alike  interior  to  the  System  and 
yet  as  actualized  by  the  related  members  of  the  System.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  this  Self-like  Being  of  the  World  as  a  Sys- 
tem of  Actualized  Relations  is  not  a  mere  ideal;  much  less  is 
it  an  unauthorized  and  unintelligible  conceit.  For  an  actual 
system  of  relations,  such  as  constitute  the  Unity  of  the  World, 
can  only  exist  within  such  a  Reality  as  combines  all  the  powers 
of  an  active  intelligence,  and  is  thus  a  living  and  unifying 
rational  Will.  This,  essentially  considered,  is  what  we  know 
a  Self  really  to  be. 

In  saying  this  we  have  doubtless  overstepped  our  data,  so 
far  as  they  exist  in  the  bare  "  brute  fact "  that  the  real  things 
of  the  world  are  known  to  man  only  as  actually  related  within 
the  system  of  relations  which  he  finds  by  experience  to  obtain 
everywhere.  This  over-stepping  is  in  part,  however,  due  to  the 
very  nature  of  the  category  of  relation  itself.  Or  rather,  it  is 
due  to  the  truth  that  the  world's  system  of  related  beings  can- 
not be  known  as  a  mere  system  of  relations.  We  say,  "  can- 
not be  known" — however  it  might  be  imagined  or  thought. 
It  is  true  that  I  am  at  liberty,  if  I  pay  no  regard  to  the  real 
facts  and  actual  events  of  which  the  race  is  having  a  continual 
experience,  to  imagine  a  quite  different  system  of  relations 
from  that  which  exists  in  this  world  of  ours.  I  can  break  the 
bond  which  Reality  has  imposed  upon  the  different  members 


186  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  the  really  existent  system,  and  can  substitute  for  it  some 
bond  which  shall  be  only  my  own  idea  of  how  things  might  be, 
or  my  own  ideal  of  how  things  ought  to  be,  in  order  to  make  a 
better  world  than  that  which  actually  exists.  This  wilful 
effort  of  mine  could  doubtless  set  into  space,  and  construct  as 
co-existent  or  sequent  in  time,  a  very  different  from  the  real 
collection  of  material  masses  and  of  self-conscious  selves.  Go 
to,  now :  The  solar  system  shall  be  built  "  on  the  square  " ; 
its  bodies  shall  no  longer  be  planets,  for  they  shall  not  wan- 
der by  elliptical  orl)its  in  space ;  and  thinking  souls  shall  not 
be  encumbered  with  bodies,  but  shall  fly  among  the  spheres 
with  inconceivable  velocity  and  subsist  on  the  violet  rays. 
Perhaps,  I  may  be  able  to  construct  a  system  of  perfectly 
statical  relations  in  space,  and  of  unchangeal)le  relations  in 
time,— although  this  would  certainly  be  more  ditfieult.  In 
the  latter  case,  however,  my  imagined  world  would  be  a  dead 
world,  and  in  fact  no  real  world  at  all;  and  in  the  former 
case,  it  would  be  not  wholly  dead  and  lacking  any  principle 
of  motion,  change,  or  life,  but  largely  if  not  wholly  unlike  our 
known  real  world. 

Again  the  mystery  of  real  existence  comes  to  the  front  and 
demands  renewed  attention.  Particular  things  cannot  be  real — 
we  found  reason  for  saying  in  another  place  (see  p.  170)  — 
unless  they  are  causes,  centers  of  forces  expressing  themselves 
according  to  what  is  called  the  nature  of  the  particular  Thing. 
And  now  there  appears  reason  for  saying  that  these  particular 
things  cannot  be  united  into  a  system  unless  some  adequate 
Cause,  or  forceful  Center  of  compulsion  for  their  ever-chang- 
ing mutual  relations,  can  be  found.  Causal  Unity,  a  unifying 
Force,  is,  therefore,  a  necessary  demand  for  the  realization  of  a 
World-System,,  Merely  imagining,  or  planning,  by  an  infin- 
itely wise  mind  would  never  result  in  an  infinite  number  of 
real  things  uniting  to  make  One  World. 

"  It  is  not  possible  longer  to  suppress  a  momentous  truth 
which  lies  just  below  the  surface  of  all  the  inore  superficial  of 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       187 

the  categories;  and  wliich  has  been  slumbering  in  the  very 
bosom  of  the  mother  of  them  all, — the  category  of  relation. 
The  truth  appears  the  moment  that  an  endeavor  is  made  to 
apply  this  category  to  the  exigencies  of  a  desire  to  account  for 
the  observed  unity  in  the  scheme  of  things.  The  particular 
sciences  help  themselves  out  by  explaining  the  partial  unifica- 
tions which  tliey  discover,  through  attributing  tiiem  to  some 
one  kind  of  Force. ^  There  is,  for  example,  the  force  of  gravity, 
the  force  of  electricity,  the  force  of  light,  etc.  And  the  most 
magnificent  and  persistent  efforts  are  also  made  to  unify  these 
difPerent  forces  by  bringing  them  into  quantitative  relations 
under  the  terms  of  a  universal  dynamics.  What  the  physico- 
chemical  sciences  are  trying  to  accomplish  by  the  methods 
of  observation  and  experiment,  as  is  their  right  and  their  duty 
to  do, — just  that,  the  metaphysical  theory  of  reality  finds  to 
be  hinted  at,  if  not  fully  disclosed,  in  the  very  attempt  to 
apply  these  universal  forms  of  human  cognition  to  the  Being 
of  the  World  considered  in  its  totality  as  a  system  of  particu- 
lar beings.  Each  one  of  these  categories,  and  especially  the 
mother  of  them  all,  has  given  token  of  the  intimate  presence 
of  a  yet  more  spiritual  and  profoundly  influential  conception." 
For  example,  it  was  found  that  Qualities  are  neither  known 
nor  conceivable  apart  from  something  that  is  said  "  to  have  " 
or  "to  exercise"  the  qualities;  and  this  vague  "something," 
when  questioned,  gave  back  an  unmistakable  echo  of  a  concep- 
tion of  Force  in  reserve,  as  it  were,  within  the  very  depths  of 
every  particular  being.  Again,  when  Becoming  and  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  Change  were  considered,  it  appeared  that  some  ac- 
tive principle  must  always  control  the  becoming,  and  thus  ac- 
count for  the  origin  and  character  of  every  particular  change. 
This  principle  of  "  a  control  of  change  "  hints  at  the  same  con- 
ception of   force.     Relations,   to  be  sure,  sometimes   seem   so 

1  Here,  as  throughout  the  discussions  of  the  following  chapters, 
this  word  is  used  in  its  more  vague  and  metaphysical,  rather  than 
strictly  scientific  signification. 


188  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

calm,  statical,  and  impassive,  that  they  at  least  would  not  suffer 
if  all  forms  of  the  manifestation  of  force  were  removed  from 
the  world.  But  at  once  we  are  reminded  that  the  mental  act 
of  establishing  relations,  whether  by  observation  or  by  argu- 
ment, is  about  the  most  energetic  thing  which  a  human  will 
can  accomplish.  Forceful,  pre-eminent,  is  the  mind  that  seizes 
and  works  out  the  most  complex  and  subtle  relations  amongst 
the  "  stuffs "  of  its  sensuous  experience.  And  some  objective 
relations  unmistakably  demand  force  for  their  establishment 
and  their  continuance  or  their  change.  Such  are  all  relations, 
for  example,  of  tension,  strain,  attraction,  repulsion,  suspen- 
sion, etc.,  in  ph3^sics;  and  all  the  ideal  relations  of  cause  and 
effect,  means  and  end,  influencing  and  being  influenced,  in 
the  social  world.  Moreover,  since  no  actual  relations  are  per- 
fectly statical  and  unchanging,  the  presence  of  force  must  be 
recognized  in  the  midst  of  them  all. 

Finally,  the  conception  of  a  differentiating  and  unifying 
force  seems  necessary  in  order  to  complete  the  actualization 
of  the  categories  of  time  and  space.  For  no  real  Thing  can 
be  "  in  space  "  without  "  occupying  space  " ;  and  nothing  with- 
out energy  in-itself,  so  to  say,  can  occupy  space.  So,  too, 
things  do  not  follow  each  other  "  in  time  "  as  mere  unconnected 
sequences.  They  are,  on  the  contrary,  connected  together  as 
causes  and  effects  in  the  time-series :  and  were  not  this  so, 
the  momently  past  world  would  have  no  influence  over  the 
world  of  the  present  moment;  and  the  momently  present  would 
have  no  influence  over  the  world  of  to-morrow,  or  even  of  the 
next  moment.  Such,  however,  would  be  an  imaginary,  or 
merely  logically  connected  world;  it  certainly  would  not  be 
the  One  Eeal  World,  as  man  knows  it  actually  to  exist  in  the 
time-series  of  its  manifold  events. 

Now,  what  has  just  been  said  amounts  to  committing  meta- 
physics at  once  to  a  position,  toward  the  attainment  and  firmer 
hold  upon  which,  science  has  for  centuries  slowly  boon  working 
its  way.    A  dynamical  view  must  he  siibstHvied  for  a  merely 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       ISf) 

statical  view  of  the  Nature  of  Reality,  of  the  Being  of  the 
World.  For  all  the  universal  and  necessary  forms  under  whirli 
man  knows  the  World  show  but  the  surface  of  its  nature, 
until  this  truth  is  recognized :  The  Being  of  the  World  is  a 
Unity  of  Force. 

But  the  phrase  "  unity  of  force," — as  employed  by  many 
(notably,  by  Mr.  Spencer) — has  no  assignable  meaning  until 
it  is  further  interpreted  in  terms  of  a  living  experience.  And 
psychology  points  unmistakably  to  its  true  and  only  meaning- 
full  interpretation.  The  experience  out  of  which  the  concep- 
tion of  Force  arises  is  that  which  I  have  when  I  will  to 
effect  a  change,  and  have  my  deed  of  will  accompanied  or  fol- 
lowed by  feelings  of  effort  and  resistance,  the  cause  of  which 
I,  either  by  observance  or  inference,  locate  in  something  other 
than  myself.  In  other  words — to  repeat  a  now  familiar  phrase 
— it  is  the  experience  of  myself  as  Will,  resisted  by  that  which 
wills  otherwise  than  I  will.  This  experience,  when  reflected 
upon,  inevitably  leads  to  the  conception  of  reality  as  dynamic, 
as  being  a  cause;  and  it  compels  the  mind  to  apply  this  con- 
ception to  all  forms  of  change  in  the  real  beings  which  are 
observed  to  be  so  related  to  each  other  that  their  changes  in 
space  and  time  are  statable  in  terms  of  some  mutually  ap- 
plicable formula.  "  Force  is  action  regarded  as  the  cause  of 
a  change  in  relations.  The  action  of  any  particular  being, 
when  regarded  as  the  cause  of  subsequent  changes  of  relations, 
either  internal  or  external  to  that  being,  is  its  exercise  of 
*  force '  so-called."  And  since  the  appropriate  use  of  the  word 
"  will  "  makes  it  equivalent  to  the  entire  active  aspect  of  the 
Self,  so  that  we  are  justified  in  saying,  "  as  a  doer  I  am  a 
Will " ;  if  we  wish  to  give  a  real  meaning  to  the  term  "  unity 
of  force,"  we  must  substitute  for  it  the  living  conception  of 
a  oneness  of  Will. 

Indeed,  there  is  no  real  unity  to  forces  that  are  located  in 
an  indefinite  or  infinite  number  of  particular  beings.  Such 
unity  is  a  mere  abstraction, — an  agreement  to  consider  as  really 


190  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

one  a  muKitude  of  existences  that  are  really  many.  Abstract 
force  is  no  entity;  wills  are,  on  the  contrary,  the  very  essen- 
tials of  reality.  Force  here  and  there,  then  and  now,  has  no 
unitary  Being;  it  cannot  act  as  a  cause  to  bring  about  a  sys- 
tenuitie  disposition  and  behavior  of  the  many  particular  beings 
which  exist  in  the  world.  The  real  Cause  of  the  observed  sys- 
tem of  things  must  be  found  in  One  Will. 

But,  furthermore,  it  is  an  orderly  system  of  things  for  which 
some  sort  of  account  is  needed.  It  is  a  world  whose  unity 
requires  a  relative,  if  not  an  absolute  permanency  of  forms, 
a  dependable  sequence  and  connection  of  changes  in  space  and 
time,  and  a  law-abiding  action  of  the  many  forces  at  work, 
for  which  a  theory  of  reality  is  demanded.  Man's  knowledge 
of  this  world,  as  it  is  obtained  through  the  achievements  of  the 
particular  sciences,  will  not  allow  him  to  imagine  forms  and 
conjecture  laws,  and  then  force  them  in  an  arbitrary  way,  or 
in'  a  purely  logical  way,  upon  the  real,  known  system  of 
tiings.  For  all  these  Tilings  actually  have  forms;  they  really 
act  in  formative  ways  upon  one  another;  they  do  actually  obey 
laws.  Now  what  does  all  this  way  of  talking,  together  with 
the  convictions  and  knowledges,  which  compel  it  and  "  back 
it  up,"  signify  for  a  true  theory  of  reality?  Philosophy  wants 
an  answer  to  this  question.  The  problem  of  metaphysics  in 
all  its  breadtli  and  depth  is  now  before  us,  as  it  has  been  great- 
ened  and  emphasized  by  the  positive  sciences.  Under  the  forces 
of  gravity,  adhesion  and  resistance,  chemical  attraction  and 
repulsion,  electricity,  etc.,  the  various  kinds  of  massive  bodies, 
molecules,  and  atoms,  of  the  earth's  substance  have  been  formed ; 
and  the  human  mind  may  discover  the  uniform  qualitative 
and  quantitative  relations  and  determining  conditions,  under 
which  tliese  various  formative  processes  have  taken  place.  By 
the  action  of  these  same  forces,  and  perhaps  of  other  forces 
wliich  miglit  properly  be  called  vital,  in  conformity  to  the 
laws  of  heredity,  natural  selection,  and  the  undeterminate  fac- 
tor   of    chance-variation,    the    different    families,    genera,    and 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "CATEGORIES"       I'Jl 

species,  of  the  animal  and  plant  world,  are  continually  being 
formed.  Each  individual,  of  any  species,  has  its  own  peculiar 
form;  and  thus  it  is  known  as  an  individual  as  well  as  a 
member  of  a  species.  No  Thing  can  be  real,  without  form. 
No  formed  thing,  or  thing  in  the  process  of  formation,  can 
escape  the  "  reign  of  law,"  The  way  it  forms  itself,  and  at 
the  same  time  exercises  a  formative  influence  on  other  things, 
is  determined  by  its  so-called  "  nature."  And  here  again  the 
mind  reaches  the  place  where  mystery  of  ultimate  fact,  and 
human  ignorance  of  the  cause  of  the  unifying  action  of  innum- 
erable causes,  limit  even  the  attempt  to  conjecture,  or  theorize, 
in  terms  of  knowledge.  Our  mental  picture  of  the  forms  and 
laws  which  we  attribute  to  things,  considered  as  a  purely  men- 
tal picture,  is  certainly  worthy  to  be  called  an  idea.  But  we  do 
not  believe  that  this  mental  picture  is  merely  our  idea;  or  that 
it  gives  notice  simply  of  the  activities  of  an  ideating  faculty  in 
us.  We  believe  that  the  forms  do  actually  belong  to  the  real 
things.  We  believe  that  the  laws  faithfully  represent — al- 
though only  in  a  partial  and  one-sided  way — the  actual  behavior 
in  a  system  of  inter-related  causes,  of  these  same  real  things. 
If  we  may  not  say  that  we  know  this  to  be  true;  then  we  may 
not  say  that  we  know  anything  of,  or  about,  the  things  of  our 
daily  experience; — much  less  of,  or  about,  the  kind  of  a  system 
of  things  in  the  midst  of  which,  and  according  to  the  Nature 
of  which,  we  may  have  any  growth  of  knowledge  at  all. 

For  the  individual  Thing,  this  universal  fact  of  knowledge — 
namely,  that  it  is  known  only  in  terms  of  an  idea — undoubt- 
edly means  to  express  the  conviction  that  it  is  itself  an  ideated 
thing.  And,  indeed,  it  may  be  claimed  with  confidence  that, 
unless  things  were  in-themselves  "  minded,"  man  could  not 
mind  things.  True  ideas  of  real  things  imply  the  immanence 
of  ideas  in  things.  In  a  more  abstract  and  figurative  way  the 
same  conviction  may  be  expressed  by  saying:  "  The  'immanent 
idea  '  joins  hands  with  'immanent'  force,  to  explain  to  the 
mind  the  inmost  nature  of  that  real  Being  to  which  they  both 


192  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

belong."  And  the  word  immanent  seems  appropriate,  because, 
just  as  there  is  no  actual  force,  that  floats  about  in  mid-air  or 
moves  as  a  kind  of  subtle  entity  off  from  one  thing  to  get  over 
on  to  another  and  different  thing;  so  there  is  no  idea  actually 
attributable  to  any  one  thing  that  is  not  realized  in  the  being 
and  behavior  of  the  thing.  In  order  to  serve  as  an  explanatory 
principle  the  idea  must  correspond  to  the  essential  nature  of 
the  reality.  And  this  is  what  science  really  means  when  it  talks 
about  the  nature  of  things — individual,  specific,  generic,  etc. 

Even  to  speak  of  a  "  system "  inevitably  implies  the  con- 
vergence, the  harmony,  brought  about  by  some  central  control, 
of  many  ideas  under  some  ideal  'plan.  Any  system — such  is  the 
nature  of  man's  mind,  and  such  the  nature  of  a  sys- 
tem— must  appear  to  him  as  the  actualization  of  some  one's 
ideas.  And  the  more  complicated  with  regard  to  the  number 
and  constitution  of  its  members  and  the  number  and  intricacy 
of  its  laws,  any  system  appears  to  be;  the  more  exacting  and 
imperative,  as  well  as  difficult,  is  the  demand  which  such  sys- 
tem makes  for  an  interpretation  in  terms  of  ideas.  This  is 
true  even  of  such  a  system  as  is  the  real  world  which  every 
plain  man  knows  some  little  about,  and  of  which  he  makes 
use  to  some  good  purpose  in  his  practical  life  day  by  day.  The 
most  ignorant  fellow  knows  something  about  the  actual  forms 
of  real  things  and  about  the  laws,  or  uniform  modes  of  action 
and  reaction,  under  which  they  are  causally  related.  But  the 
modern  sciences,  taken  in  good  faith  as  to  their  proclamations 
of  knowledge,  disclose  a  Universe  whose  vastness  of  extent, 
infinity  of  forms,  rapidity  and  extent  of  change,  subtlety  and 
magnitude  of  forces,  and  multitude  of  laws,  exceed  the  utmost 
Btretches  of  the  imagination  of  previous  generations  of  men. 
This  Ideal  these  sciences  present,  as  not  merely  an  idea  of  the 
"  scientists  "  themselves,  but  as  verifiable  knowledge  of  the  con- 
stitution and  behavior  of  the  real  Being  of  the  World.  It 
is  the  Reality,  which  metaphysical  philosophy,  as  well  as  sci- 
ence and  common-sense,   would  understand   by  the  term  Be- 


NATURE  OF  SO-CALLED  "  CATEGORIES  "       193 

ing  of  tlie  World.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  tlie  unity  of 
force,  or  One  Will,  must  also  serve  as  the  real  locus  for  the 
ideas,  or  ideals,  that  are  shaping  and  controlling  that  com- 
plex of  particular  beings  which  man  knows  as  his  world.  Will 
and  Idea  must  be  joined  in  Reality.  As  Teichniiiller,  in  his 
"  Darwinism  and  Philosophy,"  says :  "  The  interaction  of  all 
the  elements  presupposes  laws  which  go  beyond  the  existence 
of  each  separate  element,  and  embrace  all  particular  things  in 
a  unity.  Whoever,  therefore,  assumes  any  laws  of  nature 
whatever,  must  also  assume  a  system  of  laws,  and  must  con- 
sequently refer  to  one  ultimate  unity  or  ultimate  end."  The 
same  thing  must  also  be  said  of  those  forms  and  laws  under 
which  specific  kinds  of  things  come  into  being,  develope  in 
manifold  changing  relations  to  one  another,  contribute  their 
share  to  tlie  existence  and  ongoing  of  the  same  system,  and 
then  pass  out  of  existence  leaving  the  unity  of  the  system  un- 
impaired and  even  enriched. 

And  now,  gathering  together  the  conclusions  which  seem 
suggested,  if  not  forced  upon  the  mind  by  an  attempt  to  in- 
terpret the  significance  of  the  categories,  we  affirm :  "  All 
Eeality  is — as  known  to  man  or  conceivable  by  man — a  sys- 
tem of  beings  and  processes  co-operating  in  the  realization 
of  ideal  ends."  Man,  indeed,  knows  only  a  small  number  of 
these  beings,  and  knows  only  very  imperfectly  such  as  he 
knows,  or  knows  about,  in  any  degree.  The  ideas  which  things 
realize  are  always  only  partially,  fitfully,  and  dimly  repre- 
sented, by  human  ideas.  The  Ideal  of  the  World  which  its 
Unity  of  Force  is  actualizing,  under  the  conditions  of  space 
and  time,  is  even  more  imperfectly,  fitfully,  and  dimly  pre- 
sented in  terms  of  some  human  ideal.  But  thus  to  limit  the 
knowledge  of  reality  is  not  to  discredit  it  completely;  indeed, 
it  is  not  at  all  to  discredit  it,  as  valid  for  the  convictions  of  in- 
tellectual faith,  for  the  growth  of  the  sciences,  and  for  the  con- 
duct of  tlie  practical  life.  Science  does  not  simply  imagine 
that  its  inter]iretations  of  the  categories  mav  be  true  for  real- 


194  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ity;  it  knows  that  they  are  true.  All  knowledge  assumes,  and 
all  the  growth  of  knowledge  confirms,  this  conviction.  And 
when  it  is  declared  that  ideas  are  "  immanent "  in  reality,  the 
adjective  is  used  with  neither  a  spatial  nor  a  purely  figurative 
meaning;  it  is  only  asserted  that  ideas  are  a  necessary  factor 
in  the  explanation  of  reality.  "  For  Eeality,  in  general,  is 
known  as  actually  being  a  Unity  of  Force  guided  by  ideas  of 
form  and  law  into  processes  that  conform  to  ideal  ends." 


CHAPTER  X 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE 

The  general  theory  concerning  the  nature  of  that  system 
of  real  beings  which  is  known  as  The  World,  as  this  theory 
was  proposed  at  the  close  of  the  last  chapter,  obviously  stands 
in  need  of  further  elaboration,  criticism,  and  defense.  This 
need  is  chiefly  due  to  the  following  three  causes:  First,  the 
distinction  which  it  is  necessary  to  make  between  mere  things 
and  true  selves;  second,  the  apparent  difference  between  the 
meanings  of  the  various  theories  which  the  particular  sciences 
propose,  and  a  metaphysical  theory  with  its  attempt  to  elicit  the 
true  significance  of  them  all;  and  third,  the  vague  but  influ- 
ential and  wide-spreading  objection  to  any  view  of  the  nature 
of  Reality  which  is  liable  to  be  taunted  with  the  charge  of  an- 
thropomorphism, and  so  deemed  puerile  and  worthy  of  prompt 
rejection. 

This  last  objection  to  the  metaphysics  of  idealism  may  be 
most  promptly  and  effectually  disposed  of.  For  one  may  ask, 
with  an  intention  somewhat  more  than  facetious:  What  kind 
of  a  theory  that  is  other  than  anthropomorphic  do  you  ex- 
pect from  a  mind  which  belongs  to  the  species  called  an- 
thropos?  Indeed,  what  sort  of  knowledge  can  a  human  being 
claim,  that  is  not  human  knowledge?  The  swiftest  grey- 
hound cannot  outrun  his  own  shadow.  The  worst  fool  does 
not  try  to  ascend  higher  on  any  tree  by  cutting  off  from  that 
same  tree  the  limb  to  which  he  is  clinging.  The  navigator 
does  not  more  surely  reach  his  desired  haven  by  throwing  over- 
board charts,  barometer,  and  compass,  instead  of  consulting 
the  first,  observing  the  second,  and  making  the  needed  correc- 
tions in  the  pointings  of  the  third.  But  when  the  intrinsic 
absurdity   of   discrediting   any   theory   on  the  ground    of   its 

195 


196  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

anthropomorphism  merely,  is  pointed  out,  it  is  customary 
to  turn  the  direction  of  the  objection,  by  aiming  it  against 
metaphysics  in  generaL  And  this,  in  these  days,  is  chiefly 
done  by  those  who  would  place  science  and  metaphysics  in 
positions  of  sharp  contrast,  not  to  say  open  opposition.  This 
turn  in  the  objection  may  be  just  as  promptly  and  success- 
fully met  and  answered.  It  is  the  true  and  verifiable  appreci- 
ation of  what  the  Being  of  tlie  World  is,  and  the  more  com- 
prehensive and  practically  available  knowledge  of  the  nature, 
relations,  changes,  and  developments  and  uses  of  the  particular 
beings  existent  in  the  world,  which  both  science  and  metaphysi- 
cal philosophy  are  seeking.  But  science  is  as  apt  to  go  wrong 
and  subsequently  to  find  itself  confuted,  in  respect  to  its  state- 
ment of  facts,  its  definitions  of  natures  and  laws,  and  its  more 
general  hypotheses  and  theories,  as  is  philosophy.  Moreover, 
just  as  a  philosophy  not  well  grounded  in  the  particular  sci- 
ences is  airy  and  baseless,  so  a  science  without  a  metaphysics 
of  its  own  is  baseless  and  unsatisfying.  Metaphysics  is,  if 
"wise,  then  more  or  less  scientific;  science  is,  of  necessity,  more 
or  less  wisely  metaphysical.  Both  are  seeking  truth;  both  are 
of  course  anthropomorphic,  since  they  are  both  products  of  the 
mind  of  man. 

We  acknowledge,  however,  the  right  of  all  the  particular 
sciences  to  demand  of  any  theory  of  Reality,  that  it  shall  con- 
form itself  to  the  truth  of  those,  their  particular  and  partial 
theories  of  the  different  kinds  and  transactions  of  real  things, 
which  fall  within  their  respective  provinces.  In  saying  this 
it  is  meant  to  place  special  emphasis  upon  the  word.  Truth. 
Nor  is  the  word  used  with  a  sinister  meaning,  or  in  a  cap- 
tious spirit.  For  metaphysics,  as  a  Theory  of  Reality,  aims  to 
accept  all  the  established  facts,  laws,  and  theories,  of  the  par- 
ticular sciences,  and  by  detecting  and  elucidating  the  uni- 
versals  which  they  enfold  to  arrive  at  a  more  nearly  ultimate 
view  of  the  Being  of  the  World. ^ 

*With  regard  to  the  present  need  of  a  philosophy  of  nature,  I 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  197 

In  treating  the  categories  hitherto,  they  have  been  for  the 
most  part  considered  as  they  apply  to  so-called  Things.  And, 
indeed,  the  very  word  Thing  seems  consecrated  to  this  most 
general  use.  The  Ego  as  a  Self,  or — to  use  for  a  moment  the 
terms  of  religious  homily — as  an  embodied  spirit,  is  some 
sort  of  a  thing.  All  other  selves  are  known  to  it,  both  that 
they  really  are  and  what  they  really  are,  only  through  the  ap- 
pearance and  behavior  of  things.  Even  the  knowledge  by  self- 
consciousness  of  its  most  purely  spiritual  existence  and  activ- 
ities seems  always,  when  analyzed,  to  bear  traces  of  affects 
that  must  be  ascribed  to  the  thing-like  body  it  calls  its  own; 
self-knowledge  rests  upon  an  obvious  basis  in  the  sensuous  im- 
pressions, and  mental  images  of  such  impressions,  which  are 
unmistakably  of  a  thing-like  character. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  "  diremptive  process,"  with  its  con- 
tinuous development  in  both  of  its  two  aspects,  which  makes 

quote  in  full  a  note  from  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Knowledge 
(Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1897),  p.  372.  "There  are  few  more  allur- 
ing and  promising  fields  for  a  critical  use  of  the  reflective  powers 
in  which  philosophy  arises  than  those  afforded  just  now  by  the 
physical  and  natural  sciences_  I  have  several  times  already  ex- 
pressed my  conviction  that  these  sciences  are  more  than  ever 
full  to  the  brim,  and  ready  to  burst,  with  ontological  conceptions 
and  assumptions  of  most  portentous  dimensions  and  uncertain 
validity.  Surely  scepticism  and  agnosticism,  now  nearly  sated 
with  feeding  upon  the  ancient  body  of  alleged  truths  in  ethics  and 
religion,  will  soon  turn  their  devouring  maw  upon  the  structure 
generated  and  nourished  by  the  modern  scientific  spirit  as  domi- 
nant in  chemico-physical  and  biological  researches.  And  if  the 
strength  of  their  appetite  and  the  vigor  of  their  digestion  re- 
main unimpaired,  must  we  not  fear  that  even  the  bones  of  this 
structure  will  disappear  from  view? 

"  Consider,  for  example,  what  would  be  left  of  the  hypothesis 
of  biological  evolution,  if  a  thorough  critical  and  sceptical  treat- 
ment were  given  to  its  metaphysical  basis.  Surely  the  way  in 
which  many  students  of  these  sciences  vacillate  between  the  most 
comprehensive  professions  of  knowledge  as  to  what  the  world  is, 
and  how  it  came  to  be,  and  the  most  abject  confessions  of  igno- 
rance, is  little  better  than  scandalous." 


198  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

one  know  one's  Self  as  different  from,  in  some  sort  the  oppo- 
site of,  and  often  the  antagonist  of,  all  other  things,  whether 
thing-like  selves  or  mere  things  to  which  are  not  accorded  the 
privilege  of  being  selves,  is  the  most  complete  of  separations, 
whether  actual  or  imaginable.  In  terms  of  it  the  Self  conceives 
of  all  particular  beings.  Nor  is  this  a  matter  of  choice  or  of 
convenience.  It  is,  as  has  already  been  seen,  enforced  upon  all 
the  cognitive  acts  by  the  very  terms  under  which  they  take 
place;  that  is,  by  the  fact  that  the  categories  apply  to  them 
all.  All  the  particularity  that  things  have,  all  their  separate 
being  as  possessed  of  qualities,  as  measurable  and  numerable, 
as  moving  or  standing  in  relations,  and  when  acting  as  causes 
upon  each  other,  or  belonging  to  different  species  and  genera, 
involves  and  depends  upon  this  distinction  between  the  Self 
and  all  other  realities. 

It  would  seem  fitting,  therefore,  that  any  further  elabora- 
tion of  a  theory  of  reality  should  acknowledge  the  most  im- 
portant of  all  distinctions  of  a  cognitive,  and  so,  of  a  meta- 
physical sort.  This  is  the  distinction  between  Things  and 
Selves — a  distinction  which  has  its  origin  in  that  develop- 
mental process  by  which  every  human  being  comes,  more  or 
less  clearly,  to  know  himself  as  in  some  sort  apart  from  all 
other  real  beings,  both  selves  and  things.  Stated  in  more 
general  terms,  this  need  forces  a  further  division  of  meta- 
physics into  a  philosophy  of  nature  and  a  philosophy  of  mind. 
For  the  same  process  of  development  which  compels  the 
recognition  of  an  essential  separation  of  each  Self,  carries 
every  self-conscious  mind  still  further.  Parts  of  the  body  are 
obviously  less  interior  and  more  separable  than  are  other  parts, 
from  the  essential  conception  of  a  Self.  They,  at  least,  are 
mine,  and  yet  not-me.  And  the  more  the  path  of  such  reflec- 
tions is  followed,  and  the  refinements  of  self-consciousness  are 
secured  and  trusted,  the  more  interior  and  more  sharp  does 
the  separation  become  between  what  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
the  Self,  and  what  can  be  more  or  less  readily  known,  or  at 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  199 

least  conceived  of,  as  dispensable  without  impairment  or  de- 
struction of  the  real  Self.  Thus  all  of  the  complex  being  of 
the  individual  man  with  which  the  physical  and  natural  sci- 
ences have  to  do  may  come  to  be  regarded  as  falling  under  the 
domain  of  mere  things.  Then,  on  the  contrary,  the  pure  phi- 
losophy of  the  Self  becomes  the  philosophy  purely,  of  the  soul 
or  the  mind.  Now  whatever  may  be  objected  to  the  validity  or 
the  value  of  such  an  extreme  of  separation  between  the  ele- 
ments which  undoubtedly  commingle  in  all  the  experiences  of 
every  human  being,  there  can  be  little  doubt  about  the  impro- 
priety of  making  the  theory  of  the  human  body  a  distinct 
branch  of  science,  apart  from  the  chemico-physical  and  bio- 
logical sciences.  The  metaphysical  conclusions  warranted  by 
this  particular  collection  of  atoms  into  an  organic  mass,  are 
no  whit  different  from  those  warranted  by  any  other  living 
body.  My  body  is  a  part  of  nature;  it  is  only  temporarily 
loaned  to  me,  as  a  spirit,  even  if  I  may  maintain  for  myself  a 
continued  spiritual  existence  after  the  loan  is  withdrawn,  or 
even  in  independence  of  the  loan  while  I  am  still  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  it. 

It  remains  now  only  to  explain  that  in  this  chapter  the 
word  Nature  is  used  in  a  restricted  signification.  In  the  larger 
meaning  of  the  word,  Nature  is  tlie  equivalent  of  the  Being 
of  the  World,  men  and  animals  as  having  minds,  as  well  as  all 
things  that  are  supposed  to  be  without  any  minds  of  their  own. 
We  are  going  for  the  time  being,  however,  to  speak  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  nature  as  the  metaphysics  of  things, — but  more 
particularly,  under  the  terms  by  which  things  are  known  to 
the  physical  and  natural  sciences. 

It  will  readily  be  seen  that  the  theory  of  reality  justifies  a 
certain  kind  of  the  personification  of  things.  So  far  as  things 
are  known  at  all  by  selves,  they  must  be  known  as  sharing  in 
those  characteristics  which  selves  know  themselves  actually 
to  possess.  So  much  of  anthropomorphism  is  involved,  of  neces- 
sity, in  the  nature  of  things  as  known  according  to  the  nature 


200  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  the  knower.  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  always  reminding 
ourselves  that  human  knowledge  is  human;  and,  therefore, 
that  it  is  finite  in  the  sense  of  its  being  both  imperfect  and 
limited  by  the  nature  of  human  cognitive  powers.  ISTow,  in- 
dividual things  are  known  to  be  self-like,  in  that  they  are 
causes  of  change,  in  themselves  and  in  other  things,  under  re- 
lations of  space,  time,  etc.,  and  in  accordance  with  their  proper 
forms  and  laws.  Interpreted  in  terms  of  ex'perience  this  means 
that  their  essence  is  to  be  wills  expressive  of  ideas.  But  these 
individual  things  are  only  individual  in  that  they  are  ele- 
ments, or  parts,  of  a  vast  system,  which  is  known  as  some  sort 
of  a  unity;  and  known  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  unified  by  the 
progress  of  experience,  resulting  in  the  growth  of  knowledge. 
Thus,  tlie  Being  of  the  World  is  apprehended,  and  by  the  ad- 
vance of  the  sciences,  is  more  and  more  truly  comprehended, 
in  virtual  terms  of  a  Personal  Life,  Is  such  humanizing,  or 
anthropomorphizing,  of  the  world  rational  ? 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  of  human  history  that  tlie  personi- 
fication of  natural  things  and  forces  has  gone  on,  in  all  the 
past  and  to  an  almost  unlimited  extent,  in  a  quite  uncritical 
way.  Indeed,  this  tendency  to  interpret  the  existence  and  the 
behavior  of  things  in  terms  of  man's  experience  with  himself 
has  been  the  intellectual  spring  from  which  the  various 
streams-  of  religious  belief  have  taken  their  rise.  Invisible 
spirits,  constructed  by  human  imagination,  have  l)een  assumed 
in  order  to  account  for  the  self-like  appearance  and  behavior 
of  sensible  tilings.  In  so-called  primitive  and  in  savage 
peoples  this  tendency  is  peculiarly  lively  and  effective,  because 
it  furnishes  a  ready-made,  satisfactory  explanation  of  experi- 
ences which  otherwise  could  not  be  explained  at  all.  The 
character  and  results,  for  the  development  botli  of  science  and 
of  religion,  which  such  anthropomorphic  tendencies  have  had 
in  the  past,  will  l)o  furtlior  remarked  upon  when  we  come  1o 
examine  the  origin  of  religion  in  man's  experience  with  him- 
self and  with  the  world  of  things.     In  this  connection  it  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  201 

sufficient  to  point  out  that,  while  these  cliihllike  imaginings 
of  primitive  and  savage  men,  have  resulted  in  much  supersti- 
tion and  error,  and  have  served  to  create  a  complete  jumble  of 
ideas  as  to  distinctions  between  the  natural  and  the  so-called 
supernatural,  they  have  never  by  any  means  completely  ob- 
scured what  modern  men  call  the  natural  or  mechanical 
and  more  purely  scientific  or  practical  view  of  the  nature, 
uses,  and  laws,  of  material  things.  Long  after  man  had  dis- 
covered fire,  he  cut  down  a  tree  and  warmed  himself  by  using 
part  of  it  as  fuel,  while  out  of  another  intrinsically  similar 
part'  he  made  himself  a  god ;  he  worshipped  the  same  divinity 
which  he  used  to  roast  his  food  withal.  He  poisoned  his  spear 
or  arrow  in  order  to  kill  his  foe,  just  as  he  propitiated  the  ser- 
pent in  order  not  to  be  killed  himself;  there  was  something 
divine  in  the  poison  although  it  was  available  for  practical 
uses.  And  when  he  worshipped  the  all-glorious  Sun  as  the 
greatest  of  heavenly  divinities,  he  none  the  less  knew  that 
it  was  some  sort  of  a  material  body  moving  in  space  and 
furnishing  him  with  cherishing  or  withering  heat  and 
light. 

It  is  customary  to  look  on  the  attitude  of  the  modern,  in- 
structed mind,  which  is  assumed  toward  the  problem  of  the 
Being  of  the  World,  as  very  different,  both  in  science  and  in 
religion,  from  that  of  the  primitive  or  savage  man.  And  in 
truth  it  is  vastly  changed  and  much  for  the  better.  The  phi- 
losophy of  religion  now  regards  this  Being  as  a  Rational  Will, 
or  Active  Reason,  who  is  also  entitled  to  be  worshipped  and 
obeyed  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  In  the  conception  of  its 
Unity,  it  agrees  with  the  conclusions  of  the  physical  and 
natural  sciences,  by  which  religion  has  been  greatly  aided  in 
arriving  at  and  defending  this  conception.  By  the  same  sci- 
ences it  has  been  forced,  as  well  as  helped,  through  the  con- 
test which  has  gone  on  between  the  rival  (sic)  claims  of  the 
natural  and  supernatural,  to  regard  the  Divine  Being,  whom 
faith  worships  as  God,  as  manifested  by  his  immanence  in  the 


203  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

World.  Whether  he  may  also  be  known,  or  believed  in,  as 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  is  a  question  which  it  lies  outside  of 
the  province  of  general  metaphysics  to  determine,  or  even  to 
discuss.  On  the  other  hand,  the  natural  and  physical  sciences 
have  more  and  more  demonstrated,  what  they  have  with  ever-in- 
creasing confidence  assumed, — namely,  a  unity  in  reality,  a 
systematic  ordering  in  terms  of  forms,  forces,  laws,  and  the 
principle  of  evolution,  for  the  observed  varieties  and  complexi- 
ties of  the  particular  things.  Undoubtedly,  these  sciences  have 
continually  outstripped  their  definite  proofs,  on  a  basis  of 
observed  facts.  To  state  the  case  somewhat  figuratively: 
Science  knows  the  Being  of  the  World  as  perpetually  unify- 
ing itself  by  processes  which  overcome,  and  abolish  or  harmon- 
ize the  seeming  contradictions.  Therefore,  science  is  more 
and  more  ceasing  to  be  disturbed,  or  hustled  out  of  its  con- 
victions, that  further  research  and  increased  growth  of  knowl- 
edge will  continue  to  perfect, — no  matter  how  much  it  modi- 
fies in  details, — this  rational  faith  in  the  unity  of  the  world. 
Now  in  all  this,  as  a  true  and  consistent  theory  of  metaphysics 
shows,  science  and  religion  are  at  one,  so  far  as  their  re- 
spective faiths  and  knowledge  go. 

The  modern  physical  and  natural  sciences  have  developed 
a  vastly  complex,  intricate,  and  often  essentially  mysterious 
mechanism,  by  which  they  interpret  the  Being  and  the  be- 
havior of  this  one  world.  Forces,  undreamed  of  and  unimag- 
inable in  the  light  of  previously  known  facts,  are  now  being 
discovered  and  made  to  manifest  themselves  to  the  senses,  in 
however  partial  and  limited  ways.  Formerly  unattainable 
regions  of  space  are  now  revealed  through  the  telescope,  spec- 
troscope, and  improved  photography.  Elements,  so  minute 
that  the  atoms  of  chemistry  seem  gigantic  in  comparison,  are 
found  to  be  in  ceaseless  motion  with  a  swiftness  that  puts  to 
shame  the  most  of  the  planets.  The  mysterious  clianges  of 
the  ovum,  when  impregnated  by  the  protozoon,  are  displayed 
on  microscope  slides,  although  the  causes  of  these  changes  are 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  203 

scarcely  less  mysterious  than  of  yore.  But  the  general  tend- 
ency of  the  aims  and  the  claims  of  the  modern  science  of 
things  is  unmistakable.  It  would  substitute  a  mechanical 
explanation,  a  description  of  the  actual  changes  which  go  on 
in  the  mechanism,  for  any  attempt  at  a  metaphysical  theory. 
A  metaphysical  theory,  on  the  contrary,  desires  to  know  the 
real  nature  of  the  Being  of  the  World  in  terms  of  universal 
human  experience;  and  these  terms  are  always  and  inevitably 
terms  that  represent  wills,  active  in  the  realization  of  ideas. 
In  a  word,  metaphysics  interprets  mechanism  in  terms  of 
personal  experience. 

The  perfect  propriety  and  boundless  benefits  of  the  scien- 
tific point  of  view  and  the  scientific  method,  are  not  now  in 
dispute.  And  if  they  were,  no  one  should  be  swifter  and 
more  valiant  in  their  defence  than  the  inquirer  after  a  ten- 
able system  of  metaphysics,  as  a  theory  of  reality.  Only  it 
must  be  definitely  understood  in  what  essential  respects,  if 
any,  this  theory  is  modified  by  the  valid  claims  of  the  physi- 
cal and  natural  sciences,  in  so  far  as  these  are  applicable  to 
philosophy.  Many  metaphysical  fancies  and  superstitions  as 
to  the  precise  self-like  nature  of  things,  and  of  their  behavior, 
have  indeed  been  either  totally  disproved,  or  much  modified 
by  modern  science.  The  phenomena  are  now  to  be  arranged 
and  conceived  of  in  causal  relations  and  as  subjects  for 
measurement  and  calculation ;  they  are  no  longer  imagined, 
or  believed  in,  as  under  the  control  of  separable  and  invisible 
spiritual  agencies.  It  is  just  as  true  as  it  formerly  was,  how- 
ever, and  as  it  always  will  be,  that  all  things  are  known  only  as 
they  are  the  objects,  or  the  implicates,  of  human  experience; 
and  that  this  experience,  being  the  experience  of  a  Self,  is  stat- 
able, whether  its  objects  be  Things  or  Selves,  only  in  terms  of 
that  which  is  self-like.  So  far,  then,  as  the  nature  of  that 
which,  so  to  say,  accounts  for  the  mechanism  and  which  works 
the  mechanism  is  concerned,  modern  science  is  as  essentially  an- 
thropomorphic, and  its  findings  are  as  truly  a  species  of  personi- 


204  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

fication,  as  were  the  fancies  and  superstitions  of  the  primi- 
tive man. 

Let  us  now  return  to  one  of  our  earlier  points  of  standing. 
Children  and  child-like  men,  individuals  and  races,  make  great 
use  of  conscious,  spiritual  operations  in  their  attempts  to  un- 
derstand their  own  environment  and  to  adjust  themselves  to 
its  changes.  With  them,  ideas  are  forces;  or  rather,  with 
them,  the  will  to  realize  certain  conscious  purposes  accounts 
for  the  observed  facts  of  the  changing  relations  of  things  and 
of  selves.  This  insight  into  the  nature  of  other  realities  they 
cannot  attain,  until  they  have  had  experience  of  themselves 
as  ideating  forces,  or  as  wills  realizing  their  own  purposes  in 
others  than  themselves.  The  things  about  whose  self-like  con- 
stitution such  minds  feel  most  confidence,  and  which  they 
know  in  most  perfect  and  trustworthy  manner  as  capable  of 
being  appealed  to  by  motives  that  are  comprehcnsiljle,  are,  of 
course,  in  childhood,  their  playmates;  and  in  adult  life,  their 
fellow  men.  But  to  the  human  child,  the  dog,  the  horse,  the 
pet  laml),  is  scarcely  less  completely  self-like,  because  of  its  giv- 
ing abundant  signs  of  a  self-like  existence  substantially  like  its 
own.  As  knowledge  grows,  whether  such  knowledge  as  is  called 
ordinary  and  merely  practical,  or  such  as  is  scientific  and 
precise,  doubt  arises  in  the  case  of  many  individuals  and  spe» 
cies  of  things.  The  man  no  longer  sits  astride  a  hobby-horse 
and  imagines  it  to  be  controlled  in  its  behavior  by  a  purposeful 
will  of  its  own;  but  he  cannot  easily  deny  a  large  measure  of 
such  control  to  the  favorite  animal  which  he  rides  to  hunt  or 
fondles  affectionately  in  the  stable.  And  if  he  begins  to  reflect 
on  the  general  problem,  he  is  at  a  loss  to  know  just  where  to 
set  limits  to  his  anthropomorphizing.  How  much  of  this 
being  of  an  ideating  will  shall  bo  attributed  to  the  still  lower, 
and  the  lowest,  of  the  animals;  how  much,  in  moods  of  poetic 
sympathy  with  nature,  to  the  woods,  the  fields,  and  the  flowers, 
that  bloom  in  his  garden? 

Now  science,  instead  of  solving  this  difficulty,  only  increasej 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  205 

and  complicates  it.  For  tlie  mochanism  which  science  discovers 
in  all  the  animal-  and  plant-world,  and  even  in  the  very  con- 
stitution and  behavior  of  the  atoms,  is  so  much  more  wonder- 
ful and  seemingly  purposeful — however  doubtful  we  may  be 
about  the  number  and  ordering  of  the  so-called  purposes,  or 
the  precise  locus  to  which  we  are  to  ascribe  them, — that  the 
simple  child-like  way  of  attributing  souls  to  certain  choice 
things  only,  appears  to  be  an  act  of  undiscriminating  favorit- 
ism. On  the  other  hand,  science  knows  scarcely  any  better 
just  where  to  stop,  or  precisely  how  to  limit  its  theory  of  real- 
ity as  a  sytem  of  self-like  beings  than  does  the  child,  or  the 
unscientific  man.  The  student  of  nature  sees,  what  the  or- 
dinary observer  cannot  see;  he  sees  amocbas,  and  bacteria,  and 
white-blood  corpuscles,  and  ova,  and  cilia,  and  single  cells 
or  groups  of  cells,  in  all  forms  of  living  tissue,  behaving  in  a 
more  or  less  self-like  way.  Nor  can  he  arrest  his  suspicions 
of  something  immanent  in  the  reality  which,  in  some  faint 
measure  at  least,  corresponds  to  his  own  conscious  life,  when 
he  minutely  observes  the  behavior  of  the  different  beings  be- 
longing to  the  world  of  plants.  For,  in  the  first  place,  at  the 
lower  limits  of  the  two  so-called  kingdoms,  it  is  difficult,  or 
impossible  for  him  to  tell,  to  which  of  the  two  certain  species 
should  be  assigned.  And,  second,  many  of  those  species,  about 
the  plant-like  nature  of  which  there  is  no  doubt,  show  clearer 
evidences  of  a  soulful  existence  than  do  many  forms,  and 
these  by  no  means  the  lowest,  of  animal  life. 

Whatever  determination  may  be  shown  on  the  part  of  bio- 
logical science  to  assume  the  entire  burden  of  difficulty  in 
dealing  with  so  obscure  a  problem,  physics  and  chemistry  can- 
not wholly  escape  their  share.  For  the  masses,  atoms,  and 
ions,  which  these  sciences  either  observe  or  imagine,  are  also 
self-like  existences.  One  of  the  most  distinguished  of  Ameri- 
can astronomers  said  in  print  some  years  ago,  that  all  the 
planets  in  the  solar  system  always  behaved  "  as  though  they 
knew " — each  one — "  how  they  ought  to  behave  under  all  the 


206  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

circumstances,  and  taking  into  the  account  tlieir  actual  rela- 
tions to  all  the  others." 

It  appears^  then,  that  all  things  are  known  to  men  as  more 
or  less  self-like,  in  so  far  as  they  are  known  to  men  at  all. 
But  are  we  for  this  reason  obliged  to  say  that  every  single 
thing,  inorganic  as  well  as  organic,  massive  as  well  as  indi- 
vidual, really  is  a  consciously  ideating  will?  By  no  means 
necessarily  so.  Much  less  are  we  obliged  to  consider  every 
Thing  as  a  self-conscious,  self-determining  being — a  sort  of 
completed  or  fully  developed  Self.  And  here  it  is  proper  to 
interpose  suggestions  which  will  be  reconsidered  as  established 
truths  in  the  following  chapter.  No  human  Self  is  really 
such  a  being,  except  through  a  process  of  becoming,  or  self- 
evolution.  To  he  really  a  Self,  the  individual  must,  partly, 
by  action  of  its  own,  and  by  developing  that  mysterious  gift 
which  ignorance  calls  a  nature,  o-c/tiet'e  self-hood.  Further  is 
it  an  undoubted  psychological  fact  that  all  human  beings  are 
not,  and  never  become,  to  the  same  degree,  really  true  and  de- 
veloped selves.  At  the  beginning  of  their  existence,  human 
offspring  are,  as  yet,  in  no  definable  meaning  of  the  words, 
real  selves.  But  human  offspring  may,  and  under  all  normal 
conditions  they  do,  actually  develope  more  or  less  of  self-hood. 
If  one  chooses  to  tolerate  the  terms  of  the  scholastic  meta- 
physics, one  may  say  that  all  human  beings  are  at  birth  only 
"  potentially,"  and  not  actually,  true  selves.  This  pronounce- 
ment of  epistemology  and  metaphysics — that  all  things  are 
known  to  man  only  as  they  are  more  or  less  self -like — ought 
to  be  exceedingly  satisfactory  to  modern  biologists.  It  comes 
in  very  handy  when  describing  the  anthropoid  (or  man-like) 
apes,  or  whatever  other  animal  may  be  conjectured  to  have 
been  the  nearest  of  kin  (or  most  self-like)  in  man's  ancestral 
lines. 

Such  a  theory  of  reality,  when  applied  to  so-called  material 
things,  is  customarily  met  by  the  physical  and  natural  sciences 
with   several    objections.     Part   of   these   objections    are   well 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  307 

taken;  and  some  of  them  cannot  be  answered.  But  then  there 
are  objections  to  every  conceivable  theory  of  the  Being  of  the 
World,  at  large;  and  evidently  the  large  general  ground  for 
objections  lies  in  the  fact  that  man,  with  all  the  advances  of 
modern  science  and  gathering  together,  as  best  man  may,  tlie 
united  experiences  of  the  race,  knows  so  very  little  and  so 
dubiously  about  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  When,  then, 
tlie  positive  sciences  object  to  such  a  metaphysics  on  grounds 
of  agnosticism  one  should  be  ready  at  once  to  assent;  no  one 
does  know  precisely  how  self-like  is  the  real  being  of  any  in- 
dividual thing.  The  human  knower  must  know  all  he  knows 
at  all,  in  terms  of  his  self-conscious  experience.  Does  this 
experience  permit  him  truly  to  know  those  other  realities 
which  he  knows  as  his  "  fellow  men  "?  We  cannot  doubt  this; 
for  here  doubt  would  not  only  stultify  reason  but  would  un- 
dermine and  destroy  all  the  foundations  of  ethical,  social,  and 
civic  life.  How  far  does  the  same  form  of  mental  representa- 
tion touching  the  nature  of  real  things,  apply  to  the  horse 
and  the  dog,  to  the  bind  and  the  bee,  to  the  amoeba  and  the 
bacterium,  to  the  lily  or  the  palm,  to  the  planet,  the  atom,  or 
the  ion  ?  Ah !  who  shall  tell  us,  whether  "  plain  man "  or 
expert  biologist;  or  perhaps,  poet,  as  well  as  either  of  the  other 
two?  At  any  rate,  whatever  any  one  tells  of  truth  will  be 
couched  in  essentially  the  same  terms  of  self-like  existence. 

The  more  serious  of  the  objections  to  such  a  metaphysics  of 
things  as  recognizes  in  all  of  them  certain  signs  of  a  being  re- 
vealed to  man's  cognitive  activities,  in  terms  of  ideating  wills, 
are  chiefly  the  following  three:  First,  the  objection  to  any 
metaphysics  as  being  quite  beyond  the  range  of  human  ex- 
perience; second,  the  objection  that  the  descriptive  history  of 
the  mechanism  of  things  is  a  sufficient  exposition  and  ex- 
planation of  the  reality;  and,  third,  a  certain  covert  form 
of  objection,  which  consists  in  using  mere  conceptions,  and 
even  mere  words,  as  though  they  were  real  causes,  and  so 
sufficient  principles  of  explanation.     The  answer  to  these  three 


308  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

classes  of  objections,  however,  does  not  need  to  be  conducted 
in  three  parts.  It  will  be  enough  to  show  that  the  metaphysics 
of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences  themselves  is  obliged  to 
express  itself  in  terms  which  eitlier  have  no  real  meaning  at 
all,  beyond  that  of  being  convenient  abstractions,  or  else  which, 
virtually  admit,  if  they  do  not  positively  argue  for,  essentially 
the  same  theory  of  reality  as  that  which  we  are  advocating. 
And  this  must,  of  course,  be  done  in  an  irenic  and  not  polem- 
ical way.  For  such  a  method  of  discussing  common  interests 
is  imperatively  demanded  by  those  relations  of  friendship  and 
mutual  assistance  which  have  been  shown  to  exist  between 
science  and  philosophy.  In  this  spirit  the  philosopher  may 
say  to  the  man  of  science :  "  Come  and  let  us  reason  together ; 
possibly  we  may  help  each  other  to  understand  more  clearly 
what  is  the  more  ultimate  significance  of  that  interpretation 
of  the  Nature  of  Things  which  we  both  find  ourselves  com- 
pelled to  give." 

Let  it  be  repeated,  then,  that  no  fault  is  to  be  found  with 
the  physical  and  natural  sciences  because  they  make  the  as- 
sumptions and  use  the  language  of  common-sense,  or  of  a  "  non- 
self-critical  "  experience,  in  describing  the  world  of  things. 
This  is  their  privilege.  And  unless  science  aims  to  be  also 
consciously  and  learnedly  metaphysical,  this  modest  reserve 
is  its  duty.  Indeed,  in  this  way,  just  as  the  dramatist,  the 
novelist,  the  painter,  the  sculptor,  or  any  form  of  artist,  con- 
tributes most,  when  he  practices  his  art  without  attempt  to 
be  conscious  of  its  full  value  for  a  valid  theory  of  art;  so  it  is 
with  the  expert  student  of  any  species  of  real  things  in  respect 
to  his  contributions  to  general  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of 
reality. 

There  are  two  classes  of  conceptions  which  modern  science 
constantly  uses  in  solving  its  problems  and  in  presenting  the 
terms  of  the  solution  when  reached.  One  of  these  is  set  forth 
in  some  such  term  as  "  nature,"  whether  applied  to  individual 
things,  to  species  of  things,  or  to  the  total  collection  of  species 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  209 

considered  as  a  series  of  depcndently  related  species,  in  time, 
and  under  the  principle  of  evolution.  The  other  conception  is 
that  of  "  mechanism,"  the  elements  and  relations  of  which  may- 
be measured,  numbered,  and  so  combined  under  quantitative 
formulas,  into  some  kind  of  a  system.  Let  us  now  inquire 
into  the  meaning  for  metaphysics,  as  a  theory  of  reality,  of 
both  these  classes  of  conceptions. 

What  does  science  really  intend  to  sa}^  when  it  speaks  of 
the  nature  of  any  Thing;  or  when  it  applies  the  term  Nature 
(often  written  with  a  capital)  to  tlie  total  of  known  or 
imagined  natural  things?  It  means  to  designate  that  con- 
cealed part  of  the  explanation  of  observed  changes  which  can- 
not be  ascribed  to  external  beings,  or  to  relations  among  ex- 
ternal beings.  In  a  word,  the  nature  of  any  Thing,  or  System 
of  Things  is  internal.  Speaking  figuratively,  it  belongs  to 
the  very  self-hood  of  the  thing;  or,  if  one  may  make  use  of  a 
much  misused  phrase,  it  is  the  "  thing-in-itself."  Yet,  in 
order  even  to  seem  to  complete  its  full  complement  of  causes, 
science  is  absolutely  compelled  to  make  use  of  this  conception, 
which,  from  the  point  of  view  of  science  only,  always  remains 
blind,  tautological,  empty  for  theory,  and  practically  absurd. 
Let  this  sweeping  charge  be  examined  in  any  case  where  the 
conception  is  used  to  explain  the  behavior  of  particular  things. 
Let  it  be  supposed,  for  example,  that  both  physics  and  chem- 
istry are  asked  to  tell  what  is  all  they  know  about  the  thing 
which  appears  to  the  senses,  as  water.  Chemistry  will  demon- 
strate that  its  constitution  is  Ho  0, — that  is,  approximately, 
2000  atoms  of  hydrogen  gas  combined  with  1000  atoms  of 
oxygen  under  certain  conditions  (or  relations  affecting  both) 
of  temperature,  pressure,  etc.  Physics  will  recite  in  detail  the 
immensely  valuable  and  extensively  applicable  qualities  of  the 
compound,  under  variations  of  many  specific  kinds  and  ex- 
tending to  an  indefinite  number  of  individual  things  and 
species  of  things.  But  suppose  that  both  these  sciences  are 
pressed  for  more  ultimate  answers.    "  What,  now/'  the  chemist 


310  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

is  asked,  "really  is  this  so-called  hydrogen  gas;  and  what 
really  is  its  twin  sister  in  the  transaction,  the  so-called  oxygen 
gas  ?  "  "  Why  do  these  two  unite  in  just  such,  and  no  other, 
proportions  to  form  the  compound  water  ?  "  And,  "  why  has 
this  compound  such  astonishingly  different  properties  from 
those  of  which  there  is  the  slightest  trace  in  either  of  the  two 
elements  which  compose  it  ? "  The  man  of  science,  in  his 
effort  to  describe  the  nature  of  these  two  gases,  may  enumerate 
some  of  the  many  different  proportions  in  which  each  one  of 
them  unites  with  many  different  kinds  of  atoms,  under  many 
different  terms  of  temperature,  pressure,  etc.  Or,  especially 
if  he  is  enthusiastically  committed  to  the  newest  physics,  he 
may  refer  to  it  for  a  fuller  explanation  of  the  nature  of  the 
atoms.  Then  we  shall  hear  yet  more  wonderful  stories  of 
recent  discoveries  as  to  what  ions  and  electrons  can  do  within 
the  atom;  of  radio-active  properties  rather  than  atomic  forces; 
and  of,  as  yet,  wholly  unproved  conjectures  as  to  the  number 
and  geometrical  arrangement  within  the  atoms,  of  the  yet 
more  ultimate  elements  of  the  atomic  elements  themselves. 
But  after  all  is  said,  the  mind  returns  to  the  original  inquiry, 
and  presses  it  with  even  greater  insistence  and  force :  Why  do 
all  these  beings,  which  are  either  observed  or  assumed  really 
to  exist,  behave,  under  so  many  varied  and  changeable  rela- 
tions, as  they  actually  do  behave?  To  this  question  there  is 
only  one  answer  possible  at  the  last;  and  this  answer  is  a 
confession  of  the  limit  of  knowledge,  a  confession  as  to  igno- 
rance of  so  much  of  the  real  causes  as,  after  all,  resides  in 
the  things  themselves.  We  may  imagine,  then,  this  conversa- 
tion to  take  place.  Question :  "  Why  do  the  things — masses 
or  elements  of  masses — behave,  in  changing  relations  of  time 
and  space  toward  each  other,  as  they  in  fact  do  behave  ? " 
Answer :  "  Because  it  is  their  nature  to."  Question :  "  What 
do  you  mean  by  this  nature  which  causes  them  so  to  behave  ?  " 
Answer :  "  The  sum-total  of  what  they  actually  do,  so  far  as  I 
cannot    account   for   it   by   reciting   their    relations   to    other 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  211 

things."  But  shall  we  not  call  this  a  kind  of  perpetual 
"  whipping  of  the  devil  around  the  stump "  of  invincible 
ignorance?  And  is  it  not  an  ignorance  which  we  cannot  over- 
come, or  lessen,  by  driving  him  the  faster  as  Nature  herself 
increases  the  size  of  the  stump? 

If,  now,  the  physicist  is  asked  to  explain  completely  the  con- 
stitution and  behavior  of  the  compound  water  (shall  we  say, 
'' in-itsclf  "  considered?),  he  would  not  have  the  slightest  ad- 
vantage over  the  chemist,  when  questioned  in  similar  manner. 
It  is  impossible  to  explain  the  entire  nature,  or  complex  of 
properties,  of  any  material  substance  by  analyzing  it  into  the 
elements  of  which  it  is  composed;  or  to  account  for  all  that 
it  can  do  by  enumerating  and  measuring  its  changes  under  an 
endless  variety  of  different  outside  forces  and  changing  rela- 
tions. It,  too,  has  a  being-in-itself;  it  has  a  nature  of  its  own; 
and  yet  science  can  only  describe  that  nature  by  telling  the  story 
of  what  it  does,  of  how  it  behaves,  under  the  action  of  outside 
forces  and  amidst  changing  external  relations. 

What  is  true  of  any  element,  or  any  compound,  of  material 
reality,  is  true  of  every  element  and  of  every  compound.  But 
the  illustrations  of  the  general  truth  are  particularly  pertinent 
and  instructive  when  we  consider  the  explanations  which  bio- 
logical science  gives  of  organic  beings  and  their  evolution. 
Here  reference  may  be  made  to  the  very  terms,  species,  genera, 
etc.,  as  well  as  to  all  the  phrases  thought  to  be  explanatory  of 
the  reasons  for  the  connections  of  species,  for  the  changes  of 
species,  and  for  the  general  history  of  specific  forms  (such  as 
heredity,  variation,  evolution,  etc.).  Part  of  these  explana- 
tions— the  larger  part,  if  theory  seems  best  to  walk  on  all  fours 
in  that  way — must  undoubtedly  be  attributed  to  more  or  less 
appreciable  and  measurable  relations  to  an  environment  of  in- 
organic beings,  and  of  various  other  organic  beings,  other 
species,  in  the  "  struggle  for  existence "  so-called.  But  the 
complete  explanation  cannot  be  found  in  this  way.  The  indi- 
viduals of  each  species  have  a  being-in-themselves ;  and  what  is 


213  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

discovered  as  common  to  them  all,  in  respect  of  constitution, 
behavior,  method  of  development,  etc.,  science  is  obliged  to 
lump  together  in  the  same  blind  way  and  call  it  the  "nature 
of  the  species."  When  this  nature  is  seen  manifesting  itself  in 
ways  that  indicate  a  most  marvellous  intelligence  somewhere, 
but  an  intelligence  which  cannot  be  localized  in  the  individual's 
"  stream  of  consciousness  " ;  then  science  begins  to  talk  about 
instinct,  or  to  use  in  explanation  the  yet  blinder  and  more  mis- 
leading conception  of  "  unconscious  intellect." 

All  the  recent  history  of  the  biological  sciences  shows,  by 
perpetually  recurrent  and  unmistakable  signs,  the  same  neces- 
sity. Outside  of  the  Thing-itself  you  cannot  wholly  explain 
the  existence,  or  the  behavior,  or  the  development,  of  any  real 
Thing.  The  Thing-itself  must  count  in  the  explanation.  No 
wonder,  then,  that  the  science  of  biology  has  reacted  against 
the  extremes  of  a  school  which  regarded  the  influences  of  en- 
vironment as  constituting  a  sufficient  hypothesis  for  the  evo- 
lution of  species.  This  hypothesis  concealed  its  own  insuffi- 
ciency under  terms  for  the  meaning  of  which  there  was  little  or 
nothing  but  a  confession  of  complete  ignorance.  Thus  it  forced 
upon  itself  the  necessity  of  looking  within  the  living  creature, 
instead  of  without  upon  the  environment,  for  additional  means 
of  explanation.  But  here  is  a  field  of  research  which  is,  al- 
though less  extended  in  space,  even  more  complex  in  character 
and  difficult  to  subject  to  direct  observation.  Here  are  count- 
less millions  of  living  cells,  each  one  of  which  sustains  mani- 
fold relations  of  action  and  reaction,  of  changing  conditions, 
to  other  cells;  but  each  one  of  which  has  a  specific  nature  of 
its  own.  And  if  science  tries  to  explain  all  these,  as  develop- 
ing under  externally  determining  causes,  from  the  germinal 
cell  of  the  impregnated  ovum,  it  has  not  solved  the  problem 
in  any  different  way.  Indeed,  its  solution  seems  to  contradict 
from  the  first  the  most  plainly  observed  facts.  For  each  of 
the  cells  appears  to  have  a  nature  of  its  own.  Its  very  life 
consists  in  its  being,  in  large  measure,  self-determining.     But 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  213 

if,  on  tlic  contrary,  science  manages  to  regard  them  all  as  sim- 
ply the  products  of  the  parent  cell,  determined  by  environment 
within  the  body  to  such  a  form  of  development,  then,  surely, 
it  has  packed  away  into  this  parent  cell  tlie  marvel  of  an  in- 
finitely complicated  being-in-itself.  Indeed,  in  this  way,  the 
ovum  becomes,  of  all  things  directly  observable  in  the  world 
of  things,  possessed  of  a  nature  most  rich  and  wonderful.  It 
can,  not  only  make  itself  so  behave;  but  it  can  also  make  other 
beings  which  behave  like  itself. 

What  need  to  pursue  this  enigma  further,  so  far  as  the  term 
"nature,"  or  any  similar  term,  is  applied  to  individual  things? 
The  meaning  of  that,  whose  meaning  is  to  science  wholly  un- 
clear, because  properly  left  uncriticized,  is  clear — if  not  by 
any  means  absolutely  so,  at  least  relatively — when  translated 
into  terms  of  metaphysics.  Every  real  Thing  is  known  as  self- 
determining  according  to  certain  ideas.  This  assumption  of 
a  self-determination  in  accordance  with  specific  ideas  is  the  na- 
ture of  the  Thing.  No  explanation  is  complete  without  this 
assumption.  To  deny  the  assumption  is  to  stultify  all  claim 
to  explain  by  leaving  out  one-half  of  that  appeal  to  reality  which 
is  necessary  for  any  explanation. 

To  show  the  limits  and  the  insufficiency  of  all  mechanical 
theories  of  nature,  in  the  small  or  in  the  large,  is  now  a  com- 
paratively easy  task.  For  the  discussion  of  the  term  nature, 
as  applied  in  the  more  restricted  meaning,  has  prepared  the 
way  to  an  understanding  of  the  real  significance  of  the  terms 
used  to  set  forth  the  conception  of  mechanism.  Mechanical 
theories  may,  however,  be  divided  into  two  quite  distinctly 
different  classes.  Of  these,  one  may  be  called  the  merely  me- 
chanical, or  the  theories  which  aim  to  describe  appearances 
without  explicit  interpretation  of  the  categories;  and  the  other, 
those  mechanical  theories  which  are  consciously  and  inten- 
tionally metaphysical,  that  is,  which  are  theories  of  reality. 
The  former  class,  so  far  as  they  remain  faithful  to  their  true 
character,  have  only  a  historical  or  descriptive  value.     They 


214  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

narrate  the  changes  which  are  observed  in  space  and  time; 
but  they  make  no  other  attempt  to  explain  these  changes  than 
that  which  is  involved  in  their  observed  sequences  in  space  and 
time.  For  example,  in  the  cases  assumed  above,  the  chemist 
measures  the  quantity  of  the  gases,  the  degrees  of  temperature, 
changes  in  space,  the  sequences  in  time;  he  records  them 
all  with  faithful  accuracy;  and  he  then  makes  up  as  complete 
a  descriptive  history  of  the  entire  transaction  as  he  possibly 
can.  The  physicist  treats  the  observed  masses,  or  the  ions  and 
electrons,  the  numbers  and  motions  in  space  and  sequences  in 
time,  in  similar  fashion.  He  permits  himself  to  fancy  the 
beautiful  geometrical  forms  in  which  these  invisible  elements 
may  be  imagined  to  arrange  themselves,  although  their  minute- 
ness and  the  speed  of  their  movements  must  be  admitted  to 
transcend  all  the  limits  of  human  vision.  But  neither  chemist 
nor  physicist  can  properly  talk  of  forces  of  gravity,  or  even 
of  strains,  pressures,  etc.,  and  much  .less  of  forces  of  attrac- 
tion or  repulsion,  as  implying  affinities  between  the  atoms, 
or  of  radio-active  forces  as  driving  the  ions,  etc.,  without  pass- 
ing quite  beyond  the  sphere  of  a  merely  phenomenal  mechanism 
into  the  mysterious  realm  of  invisible,  ontological  entities  and 
causes.  So  also  with  the  authority  in  biology,  as  respects  his 
method  of  dealing  with  the  wonders  of  the  impregnated  ovum. 
He  may  observe  under  the  microscope  the  changes  which  actu- 
ally take  place  in  this  ovum,  and  in  its  successors  in  space  and 
time;  he  may  give  the  history  of  them  all,  either  in  technical 
language  or  on  an  endless  series  of  microscopic  slides.  But 
he  has  no  right  to  speak  of  heredity,  or  variation,  or  natural 
selection,  as  though  these  terms  covered  mysterious  forces 
which  were  the  true  but  invisible  causes  of  the  phenomena. 
For  this  is  to  do  something  more  than,  and  different  from, 
the  work  of  merely  describing  the  mechanism;  it  is  to  import 
into  the  mechanism  something  which  the  senses  cannot  discover 
or  verify,  something  from  the  categories,  something  that  is 
metaphysical  in  its  very  nature. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  215 

And,  indeed, — to  speak  plainly, — there  is  not,  and  there 
cannot  he  any  merely  mechanical  theory  of  any  natural  thing, 
or  event  in  nature.  One  of  the  most  universal,  a  priori  unwar- 
rantahle,  and  yet  marvellous  and  marvellously  effective  meta- 
physical assumptions,  is  involved  in  every  mechanical  the- 
ory, even  when  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms  by  the  attempt 
to  exclude  the  least  semblance  of  an  ontological  character. 
This  particular  assumption  is  the  measurableness  of  all  mate- 
rial things.  The  plain  man  takes  the  application  of  his 
ideas  of  the  relations  of  magnitude  and  number,  to  the  explor- 
ation and  the  practical  uses  of  Things,  as  a  matter  of  course. 
The  man  of  science  boasts  of  mathematics — geometry,  cal- 
culus, etc. — as  the  indispensable  right  arm  of  his  investigations 
and  discoveries;  and  he  feels  that  the  latter  are  placed  upon 
sure  ground  only  after  they  have  been  reduced  to  the  terms  of 
mathematics.  Biology  envies  physics  and  chemistry  for  its 
superior  privileges  in  this  line;  and  all  the  psychological  sci- 
ences strive,  although  forever  in  vain,  to  place  themselves  by 
the  aid  of  mathematics  in  the  ranks  of  the  so-called  "  exact 
sciences."  More  and  more,  also,  does  the  development  of  the 
sciences  in  their  application  of  the  principles  of  matheniatics 
to  the  mastery  of  Nature  in  the  large  and  heroic  way,  evince 
and  illustrate  the  supreme  ontological  truth:  The  concrete 
realities  which  constitute  the  comprehensive  Whole,  do  actually 
obey,  in  their  constitution  and  in  their  behavior,  the  rational 
principles,  or  categories  of  number  and  quantity.  As  affect- 
ing this  fact,  it  makes  no  difference  whether  one  takes  the  ex- 
treme and  mistaken  theory  of  Kant  as  to  the  purely  a  priori 
origin  of  these  principles,  or  adopts  the  views  of  the  most  ex- 
treme empiricism.  The  fact  is  the  important  thing.  The 
World,  as  known  to  the  particular  sciences,  is  more  or  less  per- 
fectly constructed  according  to  certain  ideal  principles  of  num- 
ber and  of  geometrical  relations  in  space,  and  of  measurable 
and  numerical  relations  in  time.  "Pure  mathematics"  U 
derived  from  man's  experiences  with  the  mathematical  natuie 


216  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  the  real  World;  and  it  is  rendered  pure  by  a  process  of  ab- 
straction which  disregards  all  the  other  categories  that  furnish 
conditions  for  the  various  existences  and  relations  of  this  real 
World. 

And  now  when  we  pass  to  the  conception  of  Nature,  as  this 
conception  is  applied  to  all  the  real  things  in  their  known  or 
imagined  relations,  we  feel  at  liberty  to  take  full  account  of 
all  the  categories  in  order  to  get  at  the  metaphysical  signifi- 
cance of  this  term.  Indeed,  we  are  compelled  to  do  this.  A 
merely  descriptive  history  of  the  mechanism  of  Nature,  or  a 
theory  of  the  Being  of  the  World  that  is  merely  mechanical, 
will  not  account  for  the  totality  for  which  man  has  experience. 
Such  a  history,  when  converted  into  a  theory,  really  explains 
nothing  whatever.  For  if  by  a  "  merely  mechanical  theory " 
be  meant  a  theory  which  is  wholly  devoid  of  metaphysical  as- 
sumptions, no  such  theory  can  either  be  framed  or  stated. 
This  Nature,  which  includes  within  Itself,  all  the  particular 
things,  with  their  varied  natures  and  manifold,  changing  re- 
lations, must  itself  be  possessed  of  all  the  categories.  Only 
in  this  way  can  it  be  known;  only  so  far  as  it  is  known  in  this 
way,  can  it  be  explained.  And  since  we  are  now  using  this 
term  to  cover  the  entire  system  of  things,  with  their  observed 
or  inferred  unity,  it  follows  that  Nature  must  be  conceived  of 
as  having  intelligibility;  that  is  to  say,  it  must  be  self-explan- 
atory. The  Being  of  the  \Yorld  mw^t  include  within  itself  all 
that  is  necessary  to  account  for  human  I'nowedge,  that  the 
Wo7-Jd  is,  and  what  It  really  ic. 

Limits  of  space  forbid  the  illustration  of  the  principle  just 
laid  down  for  all  tlie  forms  of  knowledge  in  detail;  we  must  be 
satisfied  to  discuss  briefly  two  or  three  of  the  more  important 
ones.  This  will  suffice  for  our  purpose  the  better,  because  con- 
siderations closely  akin  to  those  which  are  now  about  to  be 
offered,  have  already  been  indicated  more  than  once. 

In  the  first  place.  Nature  must  be  endowed  with  categories 
of  Quality;  and  these  must  be  of  such  sort  as  to  account  for 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  217 

the  innumerable  special  qualities  of  the  infinite  number  of 
tilings  wliieh  are  included  in  Nature.  It  has  just  been  seen 
that  the  thinnest,  most  meagre,  mechanical  theory  employs 
with  confidence  in  its  mastery  of  natural  objects,  and  in  its 
whole  theory  of  the  Universe,  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  mathe- 
matics. But  quantity  and  number  can  never  give  to  the  mind 
any  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  qualities  of  things.  One 
might  know  thoroughly,  and  reflect  through  all  eternity  upon, 
2000  parts  of  //,  and  1000  parts  of  0,  and  certain  conditions 
of  temperature,  pressure,  etc.,  and  never  arrive  at  the  most 
distant  glimpse  of  the  peculiar  nature,  as  defined  to  experience 
by  its  qualities,  of  H ^0.  And  so  it  is  with  every  real  Thing. 
To  enumerate  most  exactly  the  number  of  its  constituents, 
and  to  make  the  most  accurate  and  beautiful  geometrical  ar- 
rangement of  these  constituents,  is  never  the  equivalent  of 
knowing  the  kinds  of  ways  in  which  the  reality  compounded  of 
these  constituents  will  affect  tlie  mind  through  the  senses.  In 
most  cases,  indeed,  these  computations  have  no  conceival)le 
necessary  relation  to  tlie  most  obvious  and  important  quali- 
ties of  things.  And  where  they  do  seem  to  afford  some  quan- 
titative formula  which  may  lay  claim  to  a  law,  we  can  al- 
ways press  our  questions  backward  until  ignorance  permits  no 
reply  to  be  made  to  it  in  the  name  of  science.  Why  a  -\-h  -{-  c, 
rather  than  x  -\-  y  -\-  z,  should  have  such  a  color,  or  such  a 
smell,  or  such  a  taste,  may  be  answered  in  terms  of  number, 
in  one  sphere  of  reality;  ])ut  the  problem,  when  seemingly 
solved  in  terms  of  quantity,  will  surely  recur  in  a  yet  more 
obscure  and  unmanageable  form,  in  terms  of  quality. 

The  ultimate  explanation,  therefore,  of  all  the  qualities  of 
things  must  be  found  in  the  kind  of  a  being  that  Nature  is. 
The  Being  of  the  World  is  the  supreme  qualifier,  the  lord  and 
master  who  controls,  and  distributes,  and  gives  and  takes  away, 
the  qualities  which  make  the  natures  of  the  particular  Things. 

One  of  the  most  surprising  and  fruitful  of  the  efforts  of 
modern  science  to  escape  from  the  thralls  of  a  doubtful  or 


218  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

worn-out  metapliysics,  has  been  the  way  it  has  dealt  with  the 
category  of  Force,  This  category  is  most  distinctly  the  out- 
growth of  personal  experience,  and  most  inseparably  connected 
with  a  consciously  feeling-full  experience.  It  is  no  wonder, 
then,  that  those  who  would  find  satisfaction  in  a  mechanical 
view  of  the  world  which  should  completely  dispense  with  the 
categories,  desire  to  drop  the  word  entirely  out  of  their  scien- 
tific vocabulary.  And,  indeed,  there  are  certain  valid  reasons 
for  the  desire.  The  very  clinging  of  the  need  of  a  dead  or 
decaying  metaphysics  to  its  roots  is  one  of  these  reasons. 
Science  properly  desires  not  to  take  sides  in  obscure  metaphysi- 
cal disputes,  especially  by  way  of  incorporating  any  one  side 
into  the  language  which  it  is  required  to  use  for  scientific  pur- 
poses. Besides  this,  the  variety  of  conditions,  as  to  relations 
of  time  and  space,  and  as  to  the  efi'ects  measurably  accom- 
plished, under  which  Nature's  forces  manifest  themselves, 
makes  it  more  useful  to  substitute  certain  terms  which  definitely 
incorporate  into  themselves  some  of  these  conditions  and 
effects.  Force  is  an  exceedingly  vague  and  general  term.  It 
may  be  used  with  seeming  propriety,  of  the  masses  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  of  the  nervous  centers,  and  of  collections  of 
souls,  dead  or  alive,  in  present  or  in  historical  social  rela- 
tions. It  is  an  advantage,  which  metaphysics  need  not  be 
asked  to  pardon,  to  ignore  the  category  of  force,  and  to  employ 
such  terms  as  energy,  work,  foot-pounds,  or  other  terms  of 
dynamical  import. 

At  the  same  time  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  all  these 
terms,  and  all  similar  terms,  have  no  explanatory  value  at  all, 
as  applied  to  individual  things  or  to  the  World  as  a  whole, 
witliout  the  assumption  that  the  experience  from  wliicli  the 
conception  of  force  is  derived,  tells  to  man  the  truth  about 
the  nature  of  Eeality.  Only  as  it  is  filled  full  of  forces,  that 
are  ceaselessly  acting  and  reacting,  and  that  thus  become  the 
true  causes  of  all  motions  and  of  all  other  forms  of  change, 
does  Nature  liave  anv  semblance  of  rcalitv.     On  otlier  terms, 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  219 

the  connections  of  ideas  in  the  most  fanciful  of  dreams  would 
be  more  real  than  are  the  connections  of  things  in  a  Nature 
robbed  of  its  forces.* 

"  If  now  we  analyze  more  carefully  this  dynamical  concep- 
tion of  the  world  which  modern  physical  science  has  adopted, 
it  seems  to  involve  the  following  particulars :  ( 1 )  The  world 
of  things  is  known  as  having  some  sort  of  unity  that  is  refer- 
able to  the  conception  of  Force;  (2)  this  unity  comprises, 
however,  a  vast  number  of  particular  beings  that  must  be 
regarded  as  in  possession  of,  or  as  centres  of,  definite  and 
measurable  amounts  of  this  force;  (3)  these  particular  be- 
ings,— vehicles  of  energy,  or  centres  of  force, — as  they  change 
their  relations  to  one  another  in  space,  or  their  internal  con- 
dition (the  relations  of  the  molecules,  or  atoms,  or  ions,  that 
compose  them),  must  be  thought  of  as  increasing  or  diminish- 
ing in  the  amounts  of  work  they  are  doing;  (4)  the  change  in 
the  amounts  of  work  done  by  these  particular  beings  is  to 
be  regarded  as  caused  by  the  redistribution  of  the  One  Force 
of  the  world;  (5)  all  changes  of  relations  and  conditions,  which 
take  place  through  this  ceaseless  redistribution  of  the  World's 
Force,  are  in  accordance  with  certain  ideal  limitations  (that 
is  to  say,  they  are  not  haphazard,  but  are  according  to  laws)  ; 
and,  finally,  (6)  thus  does  the  World  acquire  a  Unity  which 
is  both  dynamical  and  ideal,  because  it  consists  of  a  vast  num- 
ber of  beings  that  are  doing  work  upon  one  another,  but  in  some 
fashion  that  has  respect  to  a  set  of  regulations  and,  it  may 
be,  to  some  common  goal  or  end." 

The  denial  of  any  one  of  these  six  assumptions  would  ap- 
pear to  mar  and  make  less  effective,  as  an  explanatory  prin- 
ciple, the  scientific  conception  of  a  living  and  forceful  Nature, 
The  truth  cannot  be  concealed  that  certain  elements  of  this 

1  The  fuller  treatment  of  this  category,  as  in  use  by  modern 
science,  is  to  be  found  in  Chapter  X.  "  Force  and  Causation  "  (A 
Theory  of  Reality,  pp.  253-293),  from  which  the  quotations  intro- 
duced here  are  taken. 


220  KNOWLEDGE,  LIEE,  AND  REAHITY 

conception  are  as  ideal  in  charar-tor,  and  as  figurative  in  their 
form  of  expression,  as  are  the  conceptions  of  myth  and  poetry 
A\hen  dealing  with  the  same  facts  of  experience.  But  science 
claims  a  peculiar  value  for  its  conception  of  Nature  because 
it  is  based  solely  upon  observed  facts.  Let  us,  then,  ask  again 
the  often-repeated  question :  What  are  the  real  facts  of  actual 
human  experience  with  that  system  of  tilings  which  is  called 
Nature,  or  the  Universe,  or  the  World?  All  that  the  senses 
assure  us,  is  simply  this:  "  (1)  Material  things  are,  in  fact, 
constantly  changing  both  their  external  relations  to  one  an- 
odior  in  space  and  also  the  internal  relations  of  their  constituent 
parts;  (2)  these  changes  are  measurable  and  comparable  for 
purposes  of  tlieoretical  or  practical  convenience."  Or,  the  gen- 
eral facts  of  human  experience  with  things  may  be  expressed 
as  follows:  "Of  a  number  of  physical  beings,  .4,  B,  C,  D, 
etc.,  existing  together  in  time,  their  simultaneous  or  succes- 
sive changes  are  observed  to  conform  to  some  formula,  such 
as  .T=.4 ....  Y ;  or  x  varies  as  \/]/.  The  cause  of  this  uniform 
mutually  dependent  behavior  of  A,  B,  C,  D,  etc.,  is  thus  declared 
to  be  found  in  their  common  possession  of  one  (or  one  kind  of) 
so-called  'energy'; — namely,  Eg  or  Eh  (energy  due  to  gravi- 
tation, or  energy  that  is  called  heat).  And,  next,  the  prin- 
ciple, or  formula,  is  spoken  of  as  the  law  of  that  particular 
kind  of  energy  (the  formula,  L,  which  is  the  rule  obeyed  by 
the  peculiar  kind  of  energy.  Eg  or  Eh)." 

"But,  further,  it  is  learned  by  experience  that  when  the 
memorable  changes  in  the  internal  condition  or  external  rela- 
tions of  A  are  increased  or  diminished  by  a  certain  number  of 
units  of  the  standard ;  these  corresponding  changes  increase  or 
diminish  in  the  internal  condition  or  external  relations  of  B, 
— provided  that  A  and  B  are  in  the  proper  relations  and  are 
the  two  bodies  exclusively  to  be  considered.  What  is  true  of 
A  and  B,  is  also  true  of  A  and  C,  of  B  and  C,  and  of  A  and 
D,  etc.;  and  so  on,  until  all  the  beings  concerned  (.4,  B,  C,  D, 
.  — N)  are  considered  in  all  of  their  possible  relations.    Hence 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  221 

the  warrant  for  tliat  figure  of  speech  which  regards  E  as  a 
gross  amount  of  an  entity  called  'energy,'  that  may  be  re- 
distributed continually  amongst  A,  B,  C,  D,  etc.,  by  being 
transmitted,  or  passed  over,  from  one  to  another." 

When,  then,  such  clear  thinkers  as  Tait  and  Clerk-Max- 
well assert  that  "  energy  has  been  shown  to  have  as  much 
claim  to  objective  reality  as  IVfatter  has,"  (Tait)  ;  and  yet, 
"  energy  we  know  only  as  that  which,  in  all  natural  phenomena, 
is  continually  passing  from  one  portion  of  matter  to  another" 
(Clerk-Maxwell),  we  must  consider  them  as  dealing  in  con- 
venient figures  of  speech.  The  impossibility  of  any  such 
actual  transaction,  however,  follows  from  the  very  nature  of 
force;  and  no  meaning  valid  for  reality  can  be  given  to  any  of 
the  expressions  that  follow  this  figure  of  speech  without  re- 
ferring back  to  the  original  experience  to  which  the  genesis 
of  the  entire  conception  of  force  has  been  traced.  Out  of 
the  same  unwillingness  to  recognize  the  full  significance  of 
the  ideal  elements  and  implications  which,  of  necessity,  de- 
termine the  scientific  conception  of  Nature,  comes  the  demand 
for  explanation  of  changes  as  due  to  "  pressure  "  and  "  strain," 
and  the  refusal  to  recognize  the  possibility  of  actio  in  distans. 
"  There  is,"  says  Professor  Challis,  "  no  other  kind  of  force 
than  pressure  by  contact  of  one  body  with  another."  "  Forces 
acting  through  void  space  are  inconceivable,  nay  absurd,"  says 
Du  Bois-Eeymond.  As  though,  forsooth,  the  very  conception 
of  force  were  not  thoroughly  interior  and  metaphysical,  and 
its  action  from,  or  distribution  over,  a  space  of  the  one-thou- 
sand millionth  of  an  inch  as  unrepresentable  by  any  sense,  as 
from  or  over  a  thousand  million  miles! 

Similar  strictures  must  be  applied  to  all  scientific  concep- 
tions connected  with  the  "  storing  of  energy,"  or  doctrines  of 
"  strains "  between  or  within  the  atoms,  or  of  the  "  energy  of 
position."  These  conceptions,  too,  conceal  immensely  valu- 
able and  convenient  figures  of  speech;  and  when  stated  in  terms 
of  mathematical   formulas   they   are  the   indispensable  means 


222  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

for  enlarging  and- enriching  our  scientific  conception  of  Nature 
as  some  sort  of  a  totality  which  requires  a  real  Unity  of 
Force. ^  But  the  meaning  of  all  this  for  a  Theory  of  Reality, 
statable  in  terms  of  human  experience,  gleams  through  the 
celebrated  dictum  of  Newton :  "  Gravity  must  be  caused  by 
an  agent  acting  constantly  according  to  certain  laws."  And 
what  is  true  of  this  particular  force  is  true  of  all  natural 
forces.  If  they  all,  whether  by  their  co-operation  or  by  their 
conflict,  and  whether  in  a  longer  or  a  briefer  time,  and  whether 

'"To  illustrate  by  a  single  example:  Certain  compounds  of 
Nitrogen,  Hydrogen,  and  Chlorine  (as  N  Hj  CI.  and  N  H  CU), 
are  explosives;  while  perhaps  the  most  astonishingly  explosive  of 
all  compounds  is  that  of  Nitrogen  and  Chlorine  N  CI3.  Now 
Nitrogen  and  Hydrogen  get  along  comfortably  enough  together, 
and  so  do  Chlorine  and  Hydrogen;  as  in  the  case  of  N  H3  or  H  CI 
and  other  compounds  of  Chlorine, — all  of  which  are  eminently 
stable  and  '  safe.'  But  the  discovery  of  the  explosive  character 
of  N  CI3  was  so  dangerous  an  affair  that  it  quite  wrecked  the 
liealth  of  the  chemist  who  made  it,  through  the  state  of  constant 
anxiety  in  which  he  was  kept  by  his  investigation.  Now  we  do 
not  give  any  adequate  explanation  of  the  tremendous  energy  dis- 
played by  N  CI3  when  we  merely  speak  of  it  as  '  stored  '  either  in 
the  N  or  in  the  CI;  or  when  we  declare  it  to  have  been  put  into 
either  of  them  by  effecting  this  combination  as  N  CI3.  The  ulti- 
mate fact  appears  to  be  simply  this:  somehow  the  natures  of  N 
and  of  CI  are  such  that  when  they  are  for  the  time  being  united, 
they  easily  part  company,  and  develop  in  the  act  of  parting  and 
reunion  an  enormous  amount  of  energy.  This  idea,  or  rational 
explanation  of  the  complex  resultant  of  the  nature  of  N,  of  the 
nature  of  CI,  and  of  the  natures  of  both  in  their  relations  to  each 
other,  and  to  the  other  elements  with  which  they  unite  on 
leaving  each  other,  is  concealed  by  chemical  science  under  the 
figurative  expression, — '  chemical  affinities.'  But  '  affinities '  are 
never  mere  forces.  '  Affinities  '  is  a  word  that  stands  for  forces 
that  Jiave  preferences.  Affinities  are  exercised  by  beings  that 
have,  belonging  to  them,  immanent  Ideas  in  control  of  the  forces; 
and  their  ideas  dictate  to  the  forces  the  terms  on  which  they  shall 
do  their  specific  amounts  and  kinds  of  work.  Without  all  this 
equipment  of  '  immanent  ideas,'  the  behavior  of  things,  chemically 
considered,  cannot  be  understood  or  explained." 


PHILOSOPHY  OF.  NATURE  223 

within  a  limited  space  or  throughout  infinite  space,  succeed 
in  realizing  the  unity  of  particular  beings,  which  we  call  tlie 
One  World;  then  they  must  all  be  particular  forms  of  the 
One  Force,  and  the  laws  they  follow  must  be  conceived  of  as 
really  the  ideas  and  ideals  controlling  this  One  Force. 

In  a  word,  the  moment  that  the  physical  and  natural  sciences 
transgress  the  limits  of  a  simple  attempt  to  tell  the  bare  his- 
tory of  the  phenomena  they  observe,  they  become  metaphysical. 
They  become  this  when  they  apply  mathematical  ideas  to 
Nature,  in  the  large.  They  become  this  more  abundantly  when 
they  find  all  the  forces  capable  of  being  considered  as  somehow 
constituting  a  Unity  of  Force.  They  become  this  yet  more 
abundantly,  when  they  regard  this  One  Force  as  capable  of 
accounting  for  the  ceaseless  production  and  destruction,  and 
the  ceaseless  changes  in  the  natures  and  relations,  under  law.';, 
of  the  infinite  number  of  particular  beings  in  this  One  World. 

We  conclude,  then,  that  all  the  language  which  the  modern 
physical  and  natural  sciences  employ  to  express  and  to  de- 
develope  the  conception  of  Nature,  in  the  large  way,  amounts 
to  endowing  the  One  World-Force  with  manifold  controlling 
ideas.  Some  of  these  ideas  we  seem  to  ourselves  clearly  to 
discern,  others  dimly,  and  still  others  we  can  only  conjecture; 
while  about  the  deeper  lying  ideals  which  this  World-Force 
may  be  realizing,  there  may  remain  overshadowing  doubt, 
or  impenetrable  darkness.  And  now  let  us  gather  together  the 
elements  of  this  conception  of  a  Cosmos,  or  natural  World- 
Order,  and  try  to  express  it  in  terms  of  personal  experience. 
Viewed  in  its  ontological  aspect,  all  the  growth  of  man's  sci- 
entific discoveries  reveals  the  Being  of  the  World  (the  "Na- 
ture "  which  philosophy  sometimes  calls  the  "  World-Ground  ") 
as  a  Unity  of  Force,  that  is  constantly  distributing  itself 
amongst  the  different  beings  of  the  world  so  as  to  bestow  upon 
them  a  temporary  gwost-independence,  while  always  keeping 
them  in  dependent  inter-relations,  for  the  realization  of  its  own 


224  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

immanent  ideas.  But  this  is  to  make  Nature  pre-eminently 
Self-like;  it  is  the  Nature  which  serves  as  the  Ground  of  all 
the  world's  self-like  things. 

The  modern  theory  of  Evolution,  as  it  is  introduced  into 
every  form  of  the  sciences,  both  physical  and  psychological, 
and  into  the  metaphysics,  which  they  all  both  assume  and  sup- 
port, does  not  lessen  but  greatly  increases  the  strength  of 
the  evidence  for  such  a  theory  of  reality.  Evolution,  as  a 
merely  descriptive  history,  a  purely  mechanical  theory  of  what 
may  be  conceived  of  as  happenings  in  millions  of  seons  of 
time  past,  has  only  the  value  of  a  logically  consistent  dream. 
But  if  it  is  to  serve  as  an  explanation  of  a  real  World,  with 
its  actual  events  and  eventful  and  ceaseless  changes,  evolu- 
tion must  be  both  dynamical  and  teleological.  That  is,  it  must 
assume  the  co-operative  working  of  vast  and  complicated  forces, 
in  boundless  spaces  and  through  infinite  stretches  of  time,  in 
accordance  with  immanent  ideas,  and  for  the  actualizing  of 
immanent  ideals.  To  the  consideration  of  the  extent  and  value 
of  the  conceptions  of  plan  and  final  purpose,  etc. — the  tele- 
ology— which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  involves,  we  shall  re- 
turn again  and  again. 


CHAPTER  XI 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND 

The  process  which  consists  in  making  distinctions,  and 
which  we  have  called  "  diremptive,"  does  not  stop  when  the 
Self  is  known  by  itself  as  apart  from,  and  yet  actively  and 
passively  related  to,  other  selves  and  to  things.  In  many  of 
its  aspects  and  relations,  this  Self  is  known  as  a  thing  like 
other  things.  It  is  not  so  much  an  embodied  soul,  as  an  en- 
souled body.  But  further  distinctions  inevitably  take  place 
which  are  interior  to  the  complex  nature  of  this  thing-like 
Self.  Some  parts  of  the  body — for  example,  parts  of  the  limbs 
and  trunk — are  perceived  by  sight  on  the  same  terms  as  ac- 
company the  visual  perception  of  all  wholly  external  objects. 
At  least,  after  a  certain  stage  of  mental  development  has  been 
reached,  considerable  parts  of  the  body  may  be  lost  without 
manifest  impairment  of  the  experiences  essential  to  a  Self. 
In  rare  cases,  knowledge  of  any  material  thing  through  several 
of  the  most  important  of  the  senses  has  been  from  birth,  or 
from  early  years,  "quite  shut  out";  and  yet  a  rich  self-devel- 
opment has  been  achieved  without  their  aid.  In  all  cases,  more- 
over, only  certain  parts  of  the  bodily  organism  have  any  self- 
feeling  localized  in  them;  other  parts  are  not  known  in  any 
way  by  the  individual  knower  as  belonging  to  himself.  This 
is  pre-eminently  true  of  just  that  portion  of  the  organism — 
the  central  nervous  system — which  modern  science  knows  to 
be  most  intimately  and  essentially  related  to  all  those  conscious 
activities  on  which  the  very   formation  of  self -hood  depends. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  only  a  matter  of  natural  necessity  but 
even  of  irresistible  rational  inference,  that  the  "  diremptive 
process  "  should  end  in  somewhat  sharply  distingu'shing  between 
the  body  that  is  mine  and  my  own  true  Self.     To  state  the 

225 


226  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

truth  in  other  terms :  Certain  experiences  are  inevitahly  and 
properly  organized  into  a  more  refined  conception  of  Self- 
hood such  as  expresses  its  true  meaning  and  real  nature; 
— while  certain  other  experiences  are  regarded  as  more  or  less 
accidental  and  even  entirely  separable  from  the  conception 
of  Self -hood.  It  is  a  fact  which  belongs  to  the  race's  most 
ancient  history  and  which  is  a  matter  of  universal  testimony, 
that  men  have  conceived  of  the  soul,  or  mind,  as  separable 
from  its  body,  and  even  as  able  to  continue  its  existence  after 
the  death  of  the  body.  Indeed,  some  of  the  chief  difficulties 
with  this  doctrine  which  science  and  sound  sense  have  to  con- 
tend with,  are  found  in  the  fact  that  primitive  and  unenlight- 
ened peoples  cannot  even  tolerate  the  possibility  of  the  soul's 
ceasing  to  exist  at  all. 

Another  preliminary  consideration  presents  itself  at  this 
point.  To  this  soul,  or  spirit,  which  may  be  regarded  as  dis- 
embodied, or  at  least  as  separable  from  its  present  organism 
and  temporarily  united  with  some  other  thing-like  existence, 
the  character  of  a  substantial,  or  even  a  material  entity,  is 
readily  given.  The  conception  is  hypostatized.  To  under- 
stand the  term,  "  a  soul,"  as  a  mere  abstraction,  and  to  at- 
tempt to  cover  all  its  experiences  with  the  vague  and  empty 
words, — a  "  stream  of  consciousness  " — is,  indeed,  for  genuine 
scientific  psycliology,  a  complete  failure  and  a  patent  folly. 
But  to  common-sense  the  same  attempt  is  inconceivably  ab- 
surd. It  becomes,  therefore,  the  most  important  task  for  a 
metaphysics  which  aims  to  construct  a  rational  theory  of 
reality  on  a  basis  of  experience,  to  determine  what  kind  of 
reality  belongs  to  that  part  of  the  Self  which  is  popularly 
called    "mind,"  "spirit,"  or  "  soul."  ^ 

As  has  already  been  intimated,  neither  the  view  which  makes 

1  For  the  fuller  discussion  of  this  branch  of  metaphysics,  see 
the  author's  Philosophy  of  Mind  (Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  1895) 
and  various  passages  in  "  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explana- 
tory " 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  227 

the  mind  an  entity  after  the  analogy  of  some  material  sub- 
stance, nor  that  which  resolves  it  into  a  mere  abstraction,  is 
true  to  the  metaphysics  of  experience.  There  are  two  well- 
established  truths  which  contradict  both  these  views.  These 
truths,  considered  both  as  a  matter  of  inquiry  and  as  systems 
of  conclusions,  are  expressed  by  the  words  "  dynamic "  and 
"  evolutionary."  The  mind,  or  soul,  is  known  to  itself,  as  every 
other  reality  is  of  necessity  known,  in  terms  of  activity,  as 
having  form  and  being  under  law,  and  as  subject  to  a  process 
of  development.  Or  to  express  the  truth  of  experience  in  a 
more  pronounced  way :  The  Self,  regarded  from  the  interior 
point  of  view, — i.  e.,  in  its  real  and  essential  nature,  as  mind,  or 
soul — is  a  will  that  is  realizing  its  own  ideas  in  a  course  of 
self-development.  Without  this  self-activity  no  real  Self  can 
exist;  with  its  co-operation  real  Selfhood  is  achieved,  more  or 
less  completely  in  time;  for  selfhood  is  not  a  ready-made  gift 
of  nature,  but  the  resultant  of  a  process,  peculiar  to  itself, 
and  which  may  properly  be  called  a  self-development. 

When  from  the  point  of  view  assumed  by  psychological  sci- 
ence the  attempt  is  made  to  discover  those  forms  of  activity 
in  which  consists  the  essential  nature  of  a  Self,  the  first  to 
appear  is  se//-consciousness.  But  the  awareness  of  one's  be- 
ing, and  of  being  in  such  a  state  and  in  such  relations  to 
other  beings,  is  no  passive  condition.  The  rather  is  it  a  pe- 
culiar expression  of  the  will,  with  a  content  of  feeling  and 
ideation  which  is  not  only  apprehended  under  terms  of  qual- 
ity, quantity,  and  relation;  but  which  is  somehow  appropriated 
to  the  Self  as  its  own  experience.  What  this  self-appropria- 
tion, as  experienced,  actually  is,  can  never  be  described  in 
other  terms  than  those  which  appeal  to  the  same  experience. 
To  know  what  it  really  is  to  be  self-conscious,  one  must  actu- 
ally have  been  repeatedly  conscious  of  one's  Self,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  other  things  and  other  selves.  No  mere  logi- 
cal description  can  make  clear,  apart  from  experience,  the 
true  nature  of  such   an  experience;   and  no  logical  juggling 


238  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

with  the  abstract  conception  of  self-consciousness  can  make 
other  than  it  really  is,  the  actual  experience  of  being  self-con- 
scious. Finally,  only  by  being  self-conscious,  as  just  that  form 
of  activity  which  it  really  is,  can  any  being  become  a  Self; 
and  only  as  the  characteristics  of  the  higher  forms  of  self- 
consciousness  are  more  or  less  completely  attained,  can  self- 
development  be  achieved. 

But,  strictly  speaking,  a  single,  complex  activity,  or  state, 
of  self-consciousness  is  only  good  for  the  knowledge  that  "  I 
am";  and  that  "I  am  here-and-now "  in  such  or  such  rela- 
tions, and  self-active  in  such  or  such  particular  ways.  But 
reality  requires  some  kind  of  continuity  of  existences.  Gen- 
eral metaphysics  has  already  taught  us  that  in  order  to  be  a 
real  and  self-identical  A,  the  existence  so  designated  must 
pass  through  a  series  of  conditions  or  states  which  define  its 
peculiar  nature — such  as  A^,  A^,  A^.  .  .  .A..  This  metaphysical 
truth  applies  to  the  Self  in  a  very  especial  way;  since  its  iden- 
tity becomes  in  thought  and  imagination  the  type  of  all  the 
self -sameness  which  is  possessed  by  other  selves  and  by  self- 
like things.  "When,  now,  the  ground  is  sought  in  experience, 
which  affords  to  the  Self  this  needed  continuity,  and  which 
enables  it  to  know  that  is  indeed  a  real  Self,  it  is  found — 
although  only  partially — in  the  activity  of  memory.  But  the 
memory  of  a  true  Self  is  no  mere  repetition  of  resembling 
states  in  the  so-called  "  stream  of  consciousness."  Neither 
is  it  mere  recollection;  if  by  this  be  meant  simply  the  recall 
into  consciousness  of  ideas  that  serve  for  practical  purposes 
as  representatives  of  experience  already  had  in  past  time. 
The  memory  of  a  true  "  mind "  must  be  what  has  elsewhere 
(p.  90f.)  been  called  "  recognitive."  Recognitive  memory  in- 
volves the  knowledge  that  "  I  was,"  "  then-and-there  " ;  and  the 
conviction  that  "  I  "  who  now  remember  was  then  the  "  I  "  who 
had  the  original  experience.  In  a  word,  there  is  a  confident 
appropriation  of  the  two  experiences,  the  original  and  the 
representative,  to  the  same  Subject,  or  Self. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  229 

But  of  all  the  countless  thousands  of  experiences  in  past 
time,  the  active  mind  can  bring  into  consciousness  by  recog- 
nitive  memory  only  a  small  handful,  grasped  .together  as  it 
were,  at  any  one  time.  "  One  thing  at  a  time,"  seems  to 
be  the  sort  of  a  rule  under  which  it  is  placed  when  it  strives  to 
recall  the  past  most  clearly,  completely,  and  intelligently.  And 
whatever  theories  are  entertained  as  to  the  indelible  char- 
acter of  recognitive  memory,  on  the  one  hand,  or  as  to  its 
dependence  upon  the  integrity  of  the  nervous  areas  and  tracts 
of  the  central  nervous  system,  on  the  other,  the  fact  remains 
that  the  knowledge  of  one's  being  and  doing  as  a  Self,  in  the 
past,  is  exceedingly  fitful  and  incomplete.  In  fact,  it  is  true 
of  the  earlier  years  of  this  life,  not  only  that  I  cannot 
remember,  "  I  was  a  Self " ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  I  was  no 
real  Self  at  that  time.  I  was  becoming  a  Self ;  and  as  in  other 
similar  matters  of  development,  it  is  impossible  to  say  just 
when  this  process  of  becoming  was  far  enough  along  to  justify 
a  claim  to  have  realized  its  end.  When  does  the  human  child 
achieve  a  real  self-hood?  In  most  cases,  perhaps  in  all,  no 
observer  can  say;  and  science  gives  us  no  general  rules  which 
enable  us  to  determine  a  priori  all  individual  cases  of  develop- 
ment. A  self-conscious  existence,  as  established  to  itself  by 
this  kind  of  its  own  activity,  must  be  symbolized  in  some  such 
such  way  as  the  following :  S  -i- .  .  .S  ^. . .  .8  ^q.  . .  .Sx. . . . Su. 
Thus  the  reality  of  a  Self,  which  is  established  solely  by 
memory,  whether  of  its  own  or  of  others, — parents,  nurses, 
friends, — is  that  of  a  being  which  springs  into  existence  for 
a  moment,  only  to  fall  out  of  existence  again  for  a  much 
longer  time.  Such  a  view,  however,  destroys  all  the  principle 
of  continuity,  as  this  principle  is  necessary  to  give  any  real 
identity  or  actual  development,  to  the  human  mind. 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  something  which  abides  must  be 
interposed  between  the  "  I  am,"  which  self-consciousness  can 
at  any  moment  establish,  and  the  "  I  was,"  which  depends 
upon  the  fragmentary  and  fitful  action  of  recognitive  memory. 


230  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  I  have  meanwhile  been " — expresses  tlie  knowledge  which 
appears  necessary  to  join  these  "  moments  "  in  the  life  of  the 
Mind  into  such  a  compact  whole  as  that  they  may  amount 
to  a  knowledge  of  its  real  nature,  actual  development,  and 
place  in  that  Nature  which  is  ascribed  to  the  world  as  a  whole. 
But  how  shall  any  one  know  that  he,  as  an  individual,  has 
"  meanwhile  "  existed — that  is,  throughout  the  time  which  has 
elapsed  between  all  experiences  which  memory  can  recall? 
Self-consciousness  cannot  furnish  this  knowledge;  memory  can- 
not furnish  it.  Indeed,  such  is  the  very  nature  of  memory 
that  it  could  never  complete  even  tlie  picture  of  such  an  en- 
during mental  existence.  A  memory  of  all  memories,  and  so 
on  to  an  infinity  of  states,  which  must  be  grasped  together 
in  one  memory,  would  be  needed  for  the  fulfillment  of  such  a 
demand  as  this.  And,  in  truth,  we  only  know  our  own  ex- 
istence, "  all  the  meanwhile,"  in  the  same  way  in  which  we 
know  the  continued  existence  of  all  beings  throughout  longer 
or  shorter  times,  and  in  different  places  as  they  are  moved 
and  located  here  and  there.  And  this  is  by  rational  inference. 
Inasmuch,  however,  as  we  know  ourselves  with  an  immediacy 
and  clearness  which  we  cannot  extend  to  other  selves,  and 
much  less  to  other  things,  it  seems  even  more  al)surd  to  suppose 
that  the  reality  of  the  mind's  life  depends  upon  the  memory 
of  its  individual  experiences.  The  conviction  which  attaches 
itself  to  this  sort  of  inference  is  intensified  and  confirmed  by 
the  growth  of  knowledge  about  ourselves.  For  it  is  found  that 
numberless  experiences,  hitherto  forgotten,  are  constantly  be- 
ing remembered ;  and  some  of  these  experiences,  when  remem- 
bered, are  known  as  really  occurring  in  the  past  time  with 
all  the  strength  of  conviction  which  belongs  to  the  most  fre- 
quently repeated  and  well-assured  memories.  The  testimony  of 
others  is  added  to  that  of  our  own  mind;  they  can  describe  the 
signs  which  showed  to  them  what  was  interior  to  ourselves,  in 
terms  which  are  at  once  recognized  as  true  to  the  mind's  actual 
life;  and  the  same  thing  cannot  be  done  for  any  other  form  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  231 

life  that  is  not  of  the  same  species.  When  a  friend  stirs  up 
my  slumbering  memory,  or  clears  up  my  disturbed  memory,  as 
to  something  which  I  thought,  felt,  or  did,  in  the  remote 
past,  he  furnishes  me  with  an  argument  for  my  own  existence 
in  the  meanwhile  as  the  same  mind,  which  is  quite  superior  to 
any  argument  which  men  can  give  to  each  other  to  prove 
the  continued  existence  of  any  self-same  animal,  or  species, 
or  inanimate  thing.  Moreover,  I  have  constantly  with  me  this 
resourceful  major  premise  for  all  this  kind  of  argument:  "Is 
it  likely  that  I,  who  can  remember  so  clearly  experiences  which 
I  confidentially  attribute  to  my  same  Self,  on  this  side  and 
on  that  of  forgotten  experiences,  really  ceased  to  exist  ?  "  The 
instant  I  recall  any  of  this  "  meanwhile,"  I  identify  myself 
as  having  been  really  existent  in  a  certain  moment  of  that 
same  "  meanwhile." 

It  is  not  strange,  then,  that  the  general  problem  of  identity, 
of  a  certain  kind  of  continuity  for  individual  real  existences, 
has  raged  about  the  Self,  as  a  self-conscious,  recognitively  re- 
membering, and  rational  Mind.  The  world  of  things  may  be 
illusion,  may  be  called  Maya,  in  defiance  of  common-sense 
and  of  science.  Man's  confidence  in  any  continuance  of  the 
spiritual  principle  of  his  existence  after  the  death  of  the  body 
may  dissolve  before  scientific  difficulties  or  religious  doubts. 
The  mind  may  strive  to  dispense  with  mere  abstractions,  and 
to  gain  a  reputation  for  positive,  scientific  discrimination,  by 
refusing  to  recognize  itself,  by  analyzing  all  its  own  experi- 
ence into  disparate  elements  in  a  so-called  "  stream  of  con- 
sciousness." But  if  it  continues  to  be  self-conscious,  and  to 
rememjjer,  and  to,  reason,  it  cannot  deny  some  kind  of  reality 
and  identity  to  itself.  For  in  the  last  resort,  that  reality  is 
the  actual  performance  of  these  activities ;  and  tliat  identity  is 
the  matter-of-fact  identification  which  takes  place  in  every 
act  of  self-consciousness,  of  recognitive  memory,  and  of  ra- 
tional inference. 

Let,  then,  this  important  distinction  be  regarded   as  estab- 


232  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

lished;  it  corresponds  to  the  distinction  which  the  most  trust- 
worthy knowledge  of  man  compels  him  to  make.  The  distinc- 
tion is,  in  fact,  actualized  and  more  and  more  confirmed  by  the 
growth  of  all  human  knowledge.  It  has  been  shown  that  Things 
are  known  to  man  as  "  more  or  less  self-like."  Some  of  them 
are  more  like,  and  some  of  them  are  less  like,  what  he  knows 
himself  really  to  be.  Only  in  terms  of  self-likeness  are  they 
known,  or  knowable,  to  man  at  all.  Of  the  higher  species  of 
animals,  there  are  certain  which  are  so  amazingly  like  selves 
that  we  scarcely  know  where,  in  some  respects,  to  draw  the 
lines  between  the  characteristics  of  their  natures  and  those  of 
our  own.  But  there  are  many  other  kinds  of  things,  to  which, 
although  they  behave  as  though  they  were  wills  realizing  im- 
manent ideas,  we  do  not  dare  to  attribute  any  separate  con- 
sciousness, so  to  say.  Only  in  the  human  species  is  the  full- 
ness of  self-hood  found  in  actual  existence.  But  man  is  a 
Self,  whose  very  nature  is  known  to  himself  as  an  organism 
with  a  mind,  or  soul;  or  as  an  ensouled  organism.  And  it 
is  only  when  he  distinguishes  between  this  organism,  with  its 
merely  "  self-like "  existence  and  behavior,  and  the  self-con- 
scious and  rational  principle  which  is  known  as  the  Soul,  or 
the  Mind,  that  he  comes  to  discern  in  its  true  and  essential 
essence,  the  reality  of  his  own  selfhood.  Others  are  more  or 
less  self-like;  man  is  the  true  Self.  But  when  the  question 
is  pressed :  "  In  what  does  the  reality  of  the  Self  consist  ? " 
or,  "What  is  it  really  to  be  a  Self?"  no  other  answer  can  be 
given  than  that  which  faithfully  and,  as  fully  as  possible, 
describes  the  Self  in  a  dynamic  and  evolutionary  way.  This 
is,  however,  the  only  way  in  which  any  reality  is  known ;  tlie 
marks  of  its  being  are  its  varied  forms  of  action  under  all 
sorts  of  relations.  To  be  a  self-conscious,  remembering,  rea- 
soning Mind,  with  all  the  feelings  which  incite,  guide,  and  ac- 
company these  activities,  is  to  establish  in  the  highest  degree 
the  claim  to  real  Self-hood. 

The  important  part  which  the  peculiar  feelings  belonging 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  233 

to  the  individual  Self  play  in  the  constitution  of  its  self-hood, 
cannot  be  overestimated.  But  this  is  only  as  they  come  under 
the  rule  of  those  essential  activities  of  the  mind  which  have 
just  been  described  as  creating  and  developing  the  reality  of 
every  true  Self.  Mere  feelings,  or  feelings,  as  such,  however 
tinged  or  saturated  they  may  be  with  either  pleasurable  or 
painful  sensations,  are  not  enough  for  such  a  creation.  Feel- 
ings must  be  recognized  by  self-consciousness,  be  remembered 
as  belonging  to  the  same  subject,  and  projected  backward  and 
forward  by  activities  of  imagination  and  thought  as  involving 
the  interests  of  this  same  subject,  in  order  to  be  the  feelings 
of  a  true  Self.  The  painful  or  pleasurable  emotions,  the  as- 
piring or  depressing  desires,  the  noble  or  ignoble  sentiments, 
must  be  self-appropriated — consciously  and  actually  so — in  or- 
der to  be  a  part  of  such  a  Self.  It  is,  therefore,  the  funda- 
mental and  essential  form  of  activity  and  development  of  the 
Mind,  in  which  a  true  Self-hood  is  realized. 

It  is  not  intended,  however,  to  deny  that  countless  important 
elements  and  subtle  influences,  of  an  organic  or  of  a  seemingly 
psychic  sort,  of  which  the  Self  never  becomes  aware,  enter 
into  its  disposition,  and  have  much  to  do  with  deciding  what- 
sort-of  a  Self  each  individual  shall  be.  The  sources  of  such 
influences  science  attributes  to  heredity,  to  disposition,  to  or- 
ganic conditions,  to  the  "  sub-conscious,"  etc. ;  and  all  this  is 
done  either  in  the  interests  of  a  soul-less  mechanism,  or  to  con- 
ceal ignorance  of  the  real  causes.  All  this  is  indeed  quite  loyal 
to  the  purposes  of  psycho-physical  science,  so  far  as  modesty  and 
frankness  prevail  over  and  control  it  all.  But  these  influences, 
this  organic  environment,  these  so-called  sub-conscious  proc- 
esses, no  matter  how  "  self-like  "  they  may  appear  in  the  eyes 
of  the  scientific  mind,  can  never,  of  themselves,  set  such  a  mind 
into  reality.  It  becomes  real,  only  when  it  actually  does  those 
things  in  which  its  own  real  being  essentially  consists.  All  other 
beings,  whether  existent  as  germ-cells  in  parental  bodies,  or 
as  cells  which  function  as  brain-cells  within  some  particular 


234  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

body,  may  determine  disposition,  cause  sensations,  arouse  and 
support  the  lower  forms  of  psychic  existence;  but  imless  there 
results  the  process  of  development  in  which  the  mind's  life 
consists,  no  real  Self  can  come  into  existence. 

There  are  certain  of  the  ideas  and  feelings  which  stand  in 
a  special  relation  of  significance  to  the  kind  of  a  Self  which 
the  development  of  the  mind's  life  secures  to  the  human  animal. 
These  are  those  products  of  thought  and  imagination  which  are 
called  "ideals,"  or  "ideas  of  value";  and  those  sentiments,  or 
forms  of  feeling,  which  attach  themselves  to  these  ideas,  and 
which  may  be  classified  as  ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious 
sentiments.  Without  these  ideas  and  sentiments,  a  mind  that 
had  the  highest  development  of  self-consciousness,  recognitive 
memory,  and  reasoning  power, — if,  indeed,  such  a  mind  could 
exist  without  these  ideas  and  sentiments, — could  scarcely  be 
classed  as  a  complete  human  Self.  To  this  conclusion  lan- 
guage lends  a  nai've  but  suggestive  consent.  A  being,  in  hu- 
man, organic  form,  who  develops  no  ideas  of  duty  or  moral 
sentiments  whatever,  is  called  by  the  popular  voice  "  inhuman  " ; 
and  in  scientific  language  such  a  being  is  called  "  defective," 
or  even  "  a  monster."  Such  beings  are  born  with  human  bodies, 
but  the  minds  connected  with  them  never  attain  to  a  truly 
human  self-hood.  It  is  not  customary  to  speak  in  so  pro- 
nounced a  manner  of  men  who  seem  to  be  deficient  in  a3sthet- 
ical  and  religious  ideas  and  sentiments.  But  this  may  be  only 
because  this  latter  deficiency  does  not  manifest  itself  in 
so  startlingly  horrid  and  dangerous  ways  as  docs  the  utter 
lack  of  moral  quality  in  one  having  the  semblance  of  a. 
man. 

The  three  leading  forms  of  the  ideal  in  human  nature,  to- 
gether with  the  qualities  which  the  experience  of  them  seems 
to  imply  as  existing  in  Nature  in  the  large,  are  so  intimately 
interwoven  with  one  another  that  marked  deficiency  in  any 
one  of  the  three  implies  more  or  less  of  deficiency  in  the  other 
two.     All  these  ideas  and  sentiments  have  a  sort  of  universal 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  235 

and  universally  obligatory  character  which  renders  them  com- 
pulsory for  every  human  being  who  would  attain  the  highest 
and  most  complete  type  of  the  self-hood  of  a  man.  But  more 
upon  these  subjects  belongs  to  the  chapters  of  the  Philosophy 
of  the  Ideal. 

Important  conclusions  follow  from  the  metaphysics  of  Mind, 
or  doctrine  as  to  "What  it  is  really  to  be  a  Mind."  Without 
development  of  mind,  no  true  selfhood  can  come  into  existence. 
The  human  organism,  when  viewed  by  a  true  Self,  would  indeed 
appear  to  be  self-like;  but  disconnected  from  a  developing  mind, 
it  could  never  really  attain  to  true  self-hood.  The  essence  of 
self-hood  is  just  these  self-constituting,  self-appropriating, 
self-developing  activities,  in  which  the  life  of  the  mind  con- 
sists. 

First,  then,  stands  the  important  inference  that  all  Self- 
hood is  a  development.  If  "  Nature  "  could  confer  self-hood 
upon  any  organic  being,  it  certainly  does  not,  in  fact,  act  in 
this  way.  Indeed,  we  seem  justified  in  saying  that  nature 
could  not  bestow  all  at  once  this  incomparably  estimable 
gift.  At  the  first,  the  human  organism,  taken  by  itself,  is  per- 
haps no  more  self-like  than  is  an  amoeba.  Taken  in  connection 
with  such  earlier  signs  of  sensation  and  idealism  as  its  move- 
ments signify,  it  is  not  so  self-like  as  the  developed  horse  or 
dog.  But  as  soon  as  mind  appears,  with  its  mysterious  activi- 
ties of  self-consciousness,  recognitive  memory,  and  reasoning 
powers  of  the  human  order,  the  life  of  the  true  Self  begins. 
But  this  life  is  not  accomplished,  and  cannot  be  accomplished, 
without  passing  through  the  stages  belonging  to  its  natural 
evolution.  It  must  have  time  to  make  its  Self.  Nor  can  this 
end  be  attained  as  the  result  of  pressure  of  circumstances 
merely,  or  as  the  resultant  solely  of  the  character  of  the  en- 
vironment. The  mind  must  take  a  hand  in  its  own  develop- 
ment. True  selves  cannot  come  into  existence  without  sclf- 
development.  A  large  measure  of  self-help  is  needed  for  the 
making  of  a  real  Self.     For  self-hood  is  that  kind  of  a  de- 


236  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

velopment  which  is  an  achievement.  Nature  may  determine 
the  nature  which  things  and  the  lower  species  of  animals  attain 
and  transmit.  But  it  is  of  the  nature  of  mind  to  be  more 
largely  self-determined  and,  hence,  to  be  self-made. 

And,  second :  the  true  Self-hood  which  active  Mind  alone 
really  is,  becomes,  according  to  this  metaphysical  doctrine,  a 
matter  of  degrees.  If  the  reality  of  self-hood  is  a  development, 
under  the  conditions  of  space  and  time,  and  necessarily  de- 
pendent upon  the  actual  exercise  and  growth  of  the  mind's 
active  life, — an  achievement,  rather  than  a  ready-made  gift  or 
endowment; — then,  of  course,  different  selves  differ  in  the 
degrees  of  their  reality.  Even  the  same  human  being  is  not  as 
much  of  a  real  Self  at  one  time  as  at  another,  of  his  existence. 
Born,  indeed,  with  what  philosophy  has  called  "  a  potentiality," 
and  what  science  refers  to  with  equal  vagueness  as  an  "  in- 
herited nature,"  the  human  baby  is  not  yet  a  true  Self ;  because 
it  does  not  as  yet  have  true  mental  life.  It  is  not  self-conscious ; 
it  is  not  a  Self  and  has  no  Self  to  be  conscious  of.  It  has  no 
true  memory;  for  there  is  nothing  for  it  to  remember,  nothing 
of  its  past  experience  which  it  can  appropriate  to  the  same 
subject  in  the  past,  which  is  the  now  remembering  subject.  It 
cannot  connect  the  gaps  between  the  "  I  am  "  and  any  "  I 
was  "  with  a  reasoned  conclusion,  such  as  "  I  have  meanwhile 
been  " ;  because  it  has  no  knowledge  of  itself  as  now  existing, 
no  power  of  self-identification,  and  no  reasoning  with  which  to 
weave  the  chain  of  continuity,  or  causal  connection,  between 
the  present  and  the  past.  But  if  a  normal  child  of  human 
kind,  it  will  develope  a  normal  self-hood;  and  this  normal 
self-hood  will  possess  the  specific  characteristics  of  the  human 
mind,  and  also  a  more  or  less  rich  content  of  individual  feel- 
ing, ideation,  and  deeds  of  will. 

Somewhat  startling  conclusions  follow  from  this  metaphy- 
sical doctrine  of  the  reality  of  a  Mind.  With  every  human 
being,  there  is  a  daily  ebb  and  flow,  and  perchance  a  nightly 
complete  cessation  of  the  activities  in  which  consists  the  reality 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  237 

of  a  true  self-hood.  To  think  of  that  reality  whose  peerless 
value  consists  in  being  active  as  mind,  as  though  it  were  a  fitful 
and  perishing  existence,  may  seem  at  first  an  insult  to  the  pride 
of  manhood,  or  even  inconceivably  absurd.  But  thought  must 
face  the  facts  and  base  its  conclusions  upon  facts.  To-night 
you  will  sleep  and  dream,  or  you  will  sink  into  a  dreamless 
sleep.  If  you  were  never  to  come  back  again  to  the  mind's 
waking  life  of  self-consciousness,  recognitive  memory,  and 
rational  thouglit,  but  were  just  to  dream  on  forever,  would 
you  not  have  forever  lost  the  larger  and  more  precious  part 
of  your  self?  But  suppose  you  were  never  to  awake  from  a 
quite  dreamless  sleep ;  in  what  respect  would  the  reality  of  your 
self-hood  differ  from  nothing  at  all?  Only  one  answer  can  be 
given ;  the  purely  negative  concept  of  "  the  unconscious,"  and 
the  largely  negative  concept  of  "  the  subconscious,"  whatever 
small  value  they  may  have  for  psycho-physical  science,  are,  for 
defining  the  nature  of  Self-hood  and  asserting  its  reality,  of 
absolutely  no  value  at  all. 

Another  truth  of  the  greatest  practical  importance  follows 
from  the  same  conception  of  the  Mind's  reality.  The  causes 
which  regulate,  and  the  conditions  which  limit,  the  various 
degrees  of  selfhood,  or  personality  in  its  highest  form  of  mani- 
festation, are  indeed  received  without  human  willing,  and 
are  largely  shrouded  in  human  ignorance,  as  they  come  from 
the  inexorable  hand  of  Nature.  The  nature  each  man  calls  his 
own,  so  far  as  it  depends  upon  inheritance,  is  not  at  all  a 
matter  of  his  choice.  Neither  can  the  individual  in  any  meas- 
ure modify  the  essential  characteristics  of  the  particular  species 
of  which  he  is  a  member;  or  of  that  larger  Nature  which  is 
the  producer  and  environment  for  all  particular  natures.  But, 
as  we  have  already  said,  it  is  the  essential  characteristic  of  the 
human  mind — its  specific  potentiality — to  develope  more  or  less 
of  those  forms  of  self-activity  which  enable  it  within  however 
narrow  limits,  freely  and  intelligently  to  determine  its  own 
character,   and   to   select   its   own  environment.     Active  self- 


238  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

development  characterizes  the  development  of  the  true  Self. 
Or  to  state  the  same  truth  in  that  language  of  common-sense 
which  so  often  corrects  or  confutes  the  theories  of  philosophers : 
"Every  man  can  make  himself  to  be  something  of  a  man." 
Therefore,  "  Be  a  man,  and  ever  more  of  a  man,"  is  no  un- 
meaning exhortation,  when  viewed  in  the  light  of  a  consistent 
metaphysical  theory  as  to  the  reality  of  the  mind.  In  these 
activities  of  self-consciousness,  recognitive  memory,  and  rational 
inference,  as  they  express  the  active  aspect  of  mental  life,  lies 
the  creative  energy  which  must  be  evoked  in  order  to  secure 
this  kind  of  reality.  But  the  full  significance  of  the  fact  is  not 
grasped,  or  even  suggested  fairly,  until  we  have  considered  the 
relation  in  which  these  activities  stand  toward  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  ethical,  testhetical,  and  religious  ideals. 

Such  a  metaphysics  of  the  mind,  with  its  answer  to  the  in- 
quiry, "  In  what  does  the  reality  of  the  person,  or  true  Self, 
consist  ?  "  places  in  a  new  light  two  problems  which,  of  old, 
have  been  deemed  most  important  by  students  of  ethics  and 
religion.  These  are  the  problems  of  Freedom  and  of  Immor- 
tality. Indirectly,  but  none  the  less  forcefully,  does  it  urge 
upon  the  mind  the  problem  of  the  essential  Nature  of  that 
Being  of  the  World,  or  World-Ground,  which  religion  per- 
sonifies and  worships  as  God.  It  will  be  remembered  that  God, 
Freedom  and  Immortality,  gave  to  the  critical  philosophy  of 
Kant  the  three  great  problems,  in  the  interest  of  the  better  solu- 
tion of  which  he  attempted  to  establish  a  sceptical  theory  of 
knowledge  to  be  followed  by  confidence  in  a  rational  faith. 
But  neither  epistemology  nor  metaphysics,  as  we  understand 
them,  will  allow  us  to  accept  the  Kantian  solution  of  these  im- 
portant problems.  Their  fuller  discussion  belongs,  indeed, 
within  those  fields  of  reasoning  and  speculation  which  still 
await  consideration.  Only  in  the  light  of  those  facts  and  ex- 
periences, with  which  morality,  art,  and  religion  concern 
themselves,  can  the  thought  frame  conceptions  corresponding 
to  these  three  important  words.     But  the  philosophy  of  knowl- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  239 

edge,  and  the  theory  of  reality  as  applied  to  the  mind,  do  fur- 
nish important  new  points  of  view  from  which  to  interpret  the 
meaning  of  these  problems.  They  also  suggest,  in  no  trivial 
way,  the  directions  in  which  one  may  look  for  light  to  be 
thrown  upon  their  solution. 

And,  first,  human  experience  with  the  essential  nature  and 
kind  of  development  which  are  realized  by  the  mental  life, 
shows  us  that  the  mind  is,  in  fact,  se?/-determining.  At  this 
point,  however,  a  preliminary  protest  must  be  made  against 
that  use  of  the  word  "  Will "  which  was  much  more  current 
and  well  approved  formerly  than  it  has  been  of  late.  Will  is 
no  separate  faculty,  to  be  distinguished  apart  from,  or  in  addi- 
tion to,  one  or  more  other  so-called  faculties  of  the  mind. 
From  the  psychologist's  point  of  view  the  word  is  most  cor- 
rectly employed  when  it  includes  the  entire  active  aspect  of 
the  conscious  Self.  For  this  reason  we  have  not  hesitated  to  say 
that  while  the  experience  of  the  individual  may  be  described 
by  telling  what  sort  of  feelings  "  I  have "  or  "  suffer  from  " ; 
with  what  intellectual  qualities  I  "  am  endowed,"  or  "  have 
cultivated  " ;  each  individual  is  justified,  the  rather,  in  declar- 
ing: "  I  am,"  essentially  considered,  a  will.  It  follows  from 
this  that  to  speak  of  "  the  will "  as  being  free,  or  not  free,  does 
not  set  forth  in  appropriate  terms,  the  real  problem.  This 
problem  is  better  expressed  as  follows :  "  In  what  respect,  and 
to  what  extent,  is  the  Mind — not  as  a  self-like  thing  but  as  the 
true  Self — actually  self-determining  ?  " 

Whenever  this  problem  of  the  mind's  freedom  is  raised,  as 
a  pure  question  of  metaphysics,  there  is  a  multitude  of  ob- 
jectors who  virtually  refuse  even  to  consider  it;  because,  as 
they  affirm,  science  has  discovered  all  self-determination  to  be 
inconceivable  and  even  absurd.  Now,  curiously  enough,  while 
there  is  a  certain  truth  in  this  attitude  toward  the  problem, 
what  is  generally  understood  to  be  the  real  finding  of  the 
physical  and  psychological  sciences  is  the  exact  opposite  of  the 
fact  implied  in  this  attitude.     Self-determination  is  indeed  in- 


240  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

conceivable,  in  that  it  cannot  be  wholly  explained  as  caused  by 
any  force,  being,  or  relation,  exterior  to  the  self  which  deter- 
mines itself.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  every  being,  known 
to  the  physical  and  natural  sciences — whether  massive,  molec- 
ular, or  atomic,  and  whether  inorganic,  or  organic,  and  plant 
or  animal — is,  -of  necessity,  to  some  extent,  self-determining. 
All  scientific  explanation  assumes  as  a  matter  of  course  the  self- 
determining  nature  of  the  particular  beings,  whose  mutual  re- 
lations and  actions  and  reactions  are  to  be  explained.  This 
does  not  mean  that  any  of  these  beings  behave  themselves  with- 
out paying  regard  to  the  other  self-determining  beings,  which 
exist  with  themselves,  within  the  same  system.  Quite  the  con- 
trary from  this.  But  it  does  mean  that  scientific  explanation  is 
always  forced  to  leave  a  residuum  of  the  unexplained ;  and  this 
residuum  it  locates  in  the  self-determining  natures  of  the  be- 
ings whose  actions  and  developments  it  observes.  The  determin- 
ations of  science  meet  their  inexorable  limitations  in  the  mys- 
tery of  self-determination.  "Why,  for  example,  does  the  atom  of 
oxygen  behave  as  it  actually  does  behave  in  the  presence  of 
the  atom  of  hydrogen?  Because  it  determines  itself  to  behave 
in  this  way.  Or,  if  your  scientific  feeling  of  pride  is  offended 
by  this,  you  may  change  the  words  about  and  say :  "  Because 
its  nature  determines  it  so  to  behave."  But  you  are  only  con- 
fessing your  ignorance  in  other  no  less  confusing  terms.  And 
this  same  atom  has  been  determining  itself,  during  millions  of 
years,  under  an  inconceivable  variety  of  the  most  complicated 
situations,  to  be  self-active  in  the  way  appropriate  to  its  nature. 
Now  it  has  been  joined  with  hydrogen  atoms  in  a  drop  of 
water;  now  it  has  left  them  and  devoted  itself  to  the  forma- 
tion of  iron  rust;  again  it  has  determined  itself  to  be  a  part 
of  the  worm,  on  which  has  fed  the  fish,  on  which  has  fed  a 
king.  And  so  it  has  become  part  of  the  brain  of  some  wise  or 
. — it  is  more  likely — foolish,  ruler  of  men.  It  is  unnecessary, 
however,  to  go  over  this  ground  again. 

It  will  at  once  be  said  that  what  science  insists  upon  claim- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  241 

ing  is  this :  Under  similar  conditions,  all  things  determine 
themselves,  or  are  determined  by  their  natures,  to  behave  in 
similar  ways.  That  is  to  say,  all  things  obey  laws;  over  them 
all  is  the  inexorable  "  reign  of  law."  What  this  highly  figura- 
tive language  of  physical  science  really  means  has  already  been 
made  sufficiently  clear.  Things,  as  causes,  in  so  far  as  their 
doings  can  be  explained,  seem  to  be  controlled  by  immanent 
ideas.  In  saying  this  we  do  indeed  double  the  mystery  of  the 
inexplicable  self-determining  Thing.  Because,  in  the  first 
place,  unless  some  sort  of  consciousness  be  assumed  as  a 
guiding  or  controlling  principle  of  the  particular  being,  it  is 
utterly  impossible  to  conjecture  what  an  idea  "  immanent  "  in 
it  may  be.  And,  in  the  second  place,  no  one  such  idea  could 
possibly  account  for  the  behavior  of  any  particular  thing  all 
through  the  rapidly  changing  variety  of  circumstances,  under 
which  it  is  called  upon  to  act.  In  fact,  there  is  no  actual  event 
which  comes  under  any  one  so-called  law;  there  are  no  two 
events  that  are  strictly  similar — not  to  say,  "  identical,"  in  the 
history  of  the  World's  development.  If  it  is  true  that  there  must 
be  important  similarities  in  things,  and  essentially  uniform 
ways  of  the  behavior  of  things,  or  else  there  could  be  no  order, 
and  no  real  World;  it  is  also  true,  that  unless  there  could  be 
ceaseless  changes,  new  products  and  combinations  in  an  end- 
less series,  and  ever  new  variety  in  the  forms  of  co-operation 
active  within,  and  between,  the  numberless  beings  of  this  same 
World,  there  could  be  for  It  no  real  development.  So  variously 
and  mysteriously  self-determining  are  even  unconscious,  mate- 
rial Things. 

But  when  science  comes  to  consider  conscious,  living  beings, 
especially  the  higher  species  of  animals,  it  is  forced  to  recognize 
a  superior  order  and  greatly  enhanced  degree  of  self-deter- 
mination. In  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  chemico-physical 
sciences,  and  of  all  the  objections  from  every  quarter,  these 
beings  cannot  be  explained  without  the  admission  that  they  are 
to  some  extent  consciously  self-determining.     With  them  con- 


243  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

sciousness  counts  as  a  force  in  determining  their  behavior  and 
the  changes  of  their  relations.  They  are  more  self-like  than 
are  unconscious  things;  and  they  are  correspondingly,  in  a 
dilferent  way  and  in  a  higher  degree,  self-determining.  It  is 
only  matter  of  experienced  fact  to  admit  that  their  behavior  is 
not  so  intelligible  as  viewed  merely  in  the  light  of  tlieir  ex- 
ternal relations,  and  without  taking  into  the  account  any  of  the 
conscious  states  with  which  they  respond  to  these  external  rela- 
tions. Two  dogs  of  iron  may  be  driven  against  each  other  so 
as  to  break  each  other  in  pieces;  two  angry,  live  dogs  do  not 
need  any  outside  force  to  bring  them  into  contact  with  each 
other.  It  is  also  matter  of  experienced  fact,  that  living  ani- 
mals, as  influenced  by  their  conscious  states,  do  not  behave  in 
the  same  uniform  way  as  do  unconscious  and  inorganic  things. 
They  are  more  freely  self-determining.  To  say  that,  if  we 
knew  all  about  this  internal  mechanism,  we  should  l)e  able  to 
predict  with  certainty  how  conscious  wills  would  exjiress  them- 
selves, and  could  then  reduce  to  an  exact  science  the  be- 
havior of  the  animals,  is  to  say  something,  either  not  very  Avise 
or  else  very  doubtful.  As  more  is  known  about  the  workings 
of  a  conscious  being  by  way  of  observation,  or  imagination, 
doubtless  it  is  possible  better  to  predict  just  what  that  con- 
scious being  is  likely  to  do.  In  fact,  all  human  life  implies 
such  opportunity  for  growth  of  knowledge  about  the  lower 
animals  and  about  men.  But  if  science  knew  still  more  about 
the  real  nature  of  such  beings,  and  especially  about  the  high- 
est type  of  such  beings, — the  self-active,  self-developing  IMind 
of  man, — it  would  probably  be  the  readiest  to  confess 
that  complete  scientific  knowledge  of  this  mystery  is  not 
possible  for  finite  intellects.  The  impossibility  is  not  due  to 
lack  of  a  knowledge  of  the  mechanism — such  knowledge  as 
science  can  cultivate  about  all  its  objects  of  investigation ;  it  is 
rather  due  to  the  real  nature  of  this  peculiar  kind  of  Object, 
which  is  essentially  mysterious  and  so  must  be  assumed  as  be- 
ing what  it  really   is — an  explanation  of  its  own  particular 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  243 

doings,  while  being  in  its  own  hidden  nature  forever  inexplic- 
able and,  therefore,  unexplained. 

Science,  naturally  and  properly  enough,  does  not  like  to 
accept  this  conclusion  of  an  unavoidable  limit  to  its  extension; 
for  it  abhors  the  inexplicable,  and  constantly  beats  against 
the  barrier  of  the  unexplained.  But,  again  we  repeat,  the  es- 
sential experience  of  science  is  to  explain  in  part  only,  and 
this  by  assuming,  in  fact,  what  is  unexplained.  Moreover, 
the  more  science  knows  of  the  real  nature  of  particular  beings, 
and  of  the  Nature  of  the  World  at  large,  the  more  there  is 
to  know  which  belongs  to  the  as  yet  mysterious,  and  if  not 
essentially  inexplicable,  to  what  is  at  least  thus  far  unexplained. 

When,  however,  this  interior  force  of  consciousness,  in  its 
active  form,  reaches  its  highest  expression  in  the  human  species, 
the  most  perfect  conceivable  type  of  a  self-determining  be- 
ing is  presented  to  thought.  Conscious  self-feelings  prompt 
this  being  to  forms  of  activity  which  will  secure  for  the  Self 
its  coveted  interests.  Conscious  self-knowledge,  and  knowl- 
edge of  other  selves  and  self-like  things,  guide  these  activities 
to  their  chosen  ends.  But  above  all,  conscious  self-determina- 
tions in  the  form  of  the  deliberate  choice  of  ideals  regulate 
through  long  periods,  and  even  during  its  entire  career,  the 
development  of  the  life  of  the  Self.  To  this  self-determining 
being,  for  the  progressive  realization  of  these  ideals,  all  the 
material  furnished  by  Nature,  whether  in  the  form  of  in- 
herited characteristics,  or  of  limitations  and  opportunities  of 
environment,  may  be  made  more  or  less  subsidiary.  And  now, 
when  science,  physical  or  psychological,  attempts  to  intro- 
duce within  the  nature  of  such  a  self-determining  Self  the  con- 
ception of  a  rigid  phenomenal  mechanism,  a  chain  of  "  other  "- 
determining  states,  it  throws  no  additional  light  on  the  meta- 
physical problem.  The  mechanical  theory  cannot  even  make 
a  self-consistent  history  of  the  successive  facts  in  that  form  of 
self-development,  which  is  known  as  the  life  of  a  Mind. 

Whatever   else   is   necessary   to   establish   the   conception   of 


244  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Freedom  in  a  tenable  and  salutary  way,  belongs  to  ethics  rather 
than  to  metaphysics. 

And  to  ethics  and  religion  belongs  the  discussion  of  the  prob- 
lem of  the  Immortality  of  the  human  Self,  as  Mind,  when 
presented  in  any  such  form  as  to  be  of  other  than  a  purely 
speculative  interest.  Yet  here  also,  metaphysics  has  some- 
thing to  say  in  preparation  of  the  way.  It  was  formerly  held, 
chiefly  in  the  supposed  interests  of  theology,  that  some  kind 
of  natural  inability  to  perish — a  sort  of  non-posse-mori — must 
be  established  for  the  human  Self.  The  reality  of  the  Mind 
must,  therefore,  be  conceived  of  as  consisting  in  some  kind  of 
an  indivisible  substance,  after  the  analogy  of  a  material  atom, 
or  of  the  indestructibility  of  mass  as  attributed  to  Nature,  in 
the  large.  But  such  a  substantial  deathlessness,  if  it  could  be 
demonstrated  a  priori,  would  be  as  useless  and  vulgar  as  it 
would  be  secure.  The  prevalent  dynamic  view  of  the  "  nature  " 
of  all  material  substances  so-called  has  banished  this  dead  and 
worthless  conception  of  what  it  is  really  to  be,  from  even  the 
lowest  classes  of  the  least  self-like  of  things.  There  is  no  sub- 
stantial existence  anywhere  which  corresponds  to  such  a  con- 
ception as  this;  and  this  conclusion  is  placed  beyond  a  shadow 
of  doubt,  on  the  testimony  with  one  voice  of  all  the  physical 
and  natural  sciences. 

What  it  is  to  be  real,  as  all  developed  human  minds  are  in 
fact  real;  or  in  other  words,  what  it  is  to  have  and  develope  the 
life  of  personality,  of  true  Self-hood; — this  we  have  just  been 
discovering,  although  only  in  part.  For  man  is  an  ethical, 
artistic,  and  religious,  as  really  as  a  self-conscious,  cognitively 
remembering  and  reasoning  being.  But  even  when  kept  as 
closely  as  possible  confined  to  the  relatively  bare  fields  of 
metaphysical  inquiry,  the  problem  of  Immortality,  in  the  light 
of  modern  science,  changes  front.  In  its  new  form,  it  may  be 
stated  as  follows:  Is  there  rational  ground  for  the  belief,  or 
hope,  that  these  actual  forms  of  activity  in  which  the  reality 
of  the  Mind  now  consists  will  be  continued,  after  the  bodily 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  245 

organization,  with  which  until  death  they  are  dependently  con- 
nected, has  ceased  to  exist? 

To  this  question,  a  certain  speculative  but  suggestive  reply 
may  be  given  in  terms  agreeable  to  the  theory  of  reality  al- 
ready developed.  It  is  too  commonly  supposed  that  change 
is  inimical  to  the  reality  and  permanence,  as  one  real  being 
among  others,  of  any  particular  thing.  But  it  has  been 
shown  that  in  fact  every  particular  thing  is  constantly  chang- 
ing, both  in  respect  of  its  internal  conditions  and  states,  and 
also  in  respect  of  its  relations  to  other  things.  Its  reality  is 
not,  then,  inconsistent  with  change.  But  the  reality  of  any 
particular  being  does  require  a  certain  consistency — the  limits 
of  which  can  never  be  set  by  a  priori  argument  but  must  ever 
be  learned  from  experience — with  some  idea  or  ideal.  In  other 
words,  to  continue  really  the  same,  the  Thing  must  remain 
faithful  to  its  Idea.  But  mere  things  do  not  consciously 
choose  the  ideas  to  which  they  must  remain  faithful;  and  the 
lower  animals,  so  far  as  we  know  them,  seem  incapable  of  such 
a  choice,  especially  if  the  idea  is  to  take  the  form  of  a  duty, 
a  thmg  of  beauty,  or  an  object  of  worship  and  obedience  as 
divine.  The  teleological  influence,  or  force,  which  determines 
the  lower  animals  to  a  consistent  development,  a  persistence 
in  the  progressive  realization  of  a  type,  does  not  spring  con- 
sciously from  themselves.  It  is  wholly  determined  for  them 
by  the  Nature  whose  offsprmg  and  wards  they  are.  Undoubt- 
edly, the  same  thing  is  largely  true  of  human  selves.  They, 
too,  are  the  offspring  and  the  wards  of  the  same  Nature.  The 
kind  of  being  with  which  they  are  "  naturally "  endowed  is  at 
once  more  delicate,  sensitive,  and  seemingly  frail,  than  that 
of  any  other  known  existence.  Self-consciousness  is  harder 
to  develope  and  retain  than  is  mere  g?/asi-animal  consciousness. 
Recognitive  memory  lapses  under  organic  or  functional  dis- 
turbances of  the  central  nervous  system  sooner  than  does  the 
automatism  of  the  unrecognized  recall  of  habitual  ideas.  The 
higher  reasoning  powers  come  latest  to  their  full  exercise  and 


24G        KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

yield  first  to  paresis  or  senile  dementia.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  this  kind  of  reality  in  which  the  mind's  life  and  devel- 
opment consists  is  signalized  by  Nature  in  several  emphatic 
ways.  To  live  such  a  life  is  to  be  the  realest  of  all  that  is  real. 
No  other  existence,  while  it  lasts,  is  so  real,  to  itself  and  to 
other  existences,  as  the  spirit's  life,  the  life  ot  the  mind: 
Again,  no  other  form  of  reality  has  the  same  value;  no  other 
is  even  comparable  with  it  in  value. 

Without  going  too  far  just  at  present  in  the  way  of  personi- 
fying that  Being  of  the  World  which  is  known  to  the  physical 
and  natural  sciences  as  Nature,  it  may  safely  be  said,  that 
the  immortality  of  the  human  mind  depends  upon  Its  Will.  Na- 
ture has  somehow  shown  itself  able  to  produce  such  a  type  of 
self-determining  and  rational  beings.  Nature  has  endowed 
them  with  the  potentiality,  and  has  entrusted  them  with  the 
supreme  task,  of  such  a  development.  Nature  has  endowed 
them,  above  all  others  of  its  children,  with  the  capacity  for 
developing  themselves  according  to  more  or  less  clearly  and 
nobly  conceived  ideals.  The  same  Nature  which  has  developed 
the  human  organism,  and  which  momently  weaves  its  Avonder- 
ful  texture  by  driving  through  it  the  shuttles  of  life  and  death, 
will  in  the  end  dissolve  this  same  organism.  Will  the  life 
and  development  of  the  mind  be  annihilated  at  the  same  time? 
This  depends  upon  the  Will  of  the  same  Nature  which  haa 
built  the  body,  endowed  the  mind,  connected  the  two  in  the 
unity  we  call  a  Self,  developed  them  in  this  connection,  and 
finally  destroyed  the  body.  We  must,  therefore,  re-examine 
and  enlarge  our  conception  of  Nature,  to  see,  if  perchance,  we 
can  discover  its  will  in  this  regard. 

There  is  one  respect,  however,  in  which  not  a  few  scientific 
objectors  think  they  know  enough  about  Nature's  will  with 
respect  to  man's  hope  of  immortality,  to  decide  the  question 
by  throwing  it  peremptorily  out  of  court.  It  is  Nature,  they 
admit  as  a  matter  of  course,  which  establishes  and  maintains 
that  intimate  connection  of  the  organism  with  the  mind's  life. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  247 

on  which  the  continuance  of  the  human  Self  depends.  This 
connection,  it  is  claimed,  is  now  so  well  known  by  modern 
science,  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  mind  to  go  on  exist- 
ing after  the  organism  has  ceased  existing.  In  reply,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  intimacy  of  this  connection  has  been 
emphasized  by  our  entire  theory  of  knowledge,  and  by  our  view 
of  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of  reality.  Only  as  an  embodied 
mind,  or  an  "ensouled"  body,  does  the  human  Self  exist  and 
become  acquainied  with  its  fellow  selves  and  with  all  self- 
like things.  After  the  analogy  of  its  experience  with  itself, 
as  thus  strangely  compounded,  it  attributes  mind-qualities  or 
activities  ("immanent"  or  conscious  ideas)  to  all  things; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  it  conceives  of  all  the  mind's  qualities 
and  activities  as  related  to  a  world  of  material  things.  All 
this  is  indisputable  fact  of  experience. 

But  the  making  of  the  fundamental  distinctions  between 
mind  and  body,  and  the  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  mind, 
as  the  real  Self,  over  mindless  organism,  is  also  indisputable 
fact  of  experience.  This,  too,  is  an  indication  of  the  Will  of  'Na- 
tnre  with  regard  to  the  nature  and  development  of  the  mind's 
life.  Moreover,  this  "  diremptive  process "  results  in  sep- 
arating the  two  parts  of  the  one  Self  in  such  a  way  that  the 
continued  existence  of  the  one  no  longer  appears  so  absolutely 
essential  to  the  existence  of  the  other.  Indeed,  when  analyzed 
from  the  purely  scientific  point  of  view,  the  connection  between 
soul,  or  mind,  and  body,  appears  in  no  respect  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  that  which  may  temporarily  exist  between  any  two 
or  more  kinds  of  reality.  Stated  in  terms  of  pure  mechanism, 
it  has  only  the  value  of  a  very  imperfect  and  extremely  doubt- 
ful descriptive  history.  When  such  known  changes,  as,  for 
example,  the  desire  to  use  a  certain  book  in  my  library  and 
the  resolve  to  rise  from  my  chair  and  take  it  down,  occur  in 
consciousness,  I  know  that  they  are  followed  by  changes  in  the 
relations  of  material  things  which  correspond  to  the  desire 
and  to  its  resulting  deed  of  will.    Of  the  thousands  of  interven- 


248  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ing  links  between  those  known  facts  which  go  on  within  the 
organism,  there  are  some  of  which  I  am  fairly  sure  on  scien- 
tific grounds;  but  others  are  matters  only  of  uncertain  conjec- 
ture, and  must  remain  utterly  hidden  from  any  available  means 
of  observation  or  experiment.  When,  then,  the  attempt  is 
made  to  give  a  metaphysical,  or  ontological,  interpretation  of 
these  occurrences,  and  thus  deal  with  them  as  the  result  .of 
real  beings,  influencing  each  other  in  a  causal  way ;  the  real- 
ity of  the  conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  and  the  actu- 
ality of  its  control  over  the  body,  takes  precedence  of  all  else 
that  is  immediately  and  clearly  known,  or  knowable,  about  the 
entire  complex  transaction. 

Over  the  entire  field  of  the  dispute  as  to  the  possibility  of 
human  immortality,  so  far  as  physiological  and  psycho-physi- 
cal science  has  anything  to  say,  the  history  of  the  last  fifty 
years  sheds  an  instructive  light.  At  one  time  it  seemed  as 
though  such  scientific  researches  were  destined  to  destroy  the 
hope  of  a  continued  existence  for  the  mind  apart  from  that 
organism  which,  with  it,  makes  the  constitution  of  a  human 
Self.  After,  the  debate  had  ranged  and  raged  over  the  field 
of  experience,  both  parties  seemed  to  be  exhausted  and  willing 
to  retire  with  the  verdict  of  a  battle  drawn,  and  not  to  be  scien- 
tifically decided  in  either  way.  But  of  late — we  have  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying — the  doctrine  which  affirms  a  possible,  and 
even  a  probable,  separate  existence  for  the  mind  after  the 
death  of  the  bodily  organism,  has  been  gaining  ground  in 
experience.  It  is  true,  on  the  one  hand,  that  modern  physi- 
ology is  constantly  discovering  new  and  important  relations 
between  the  constitution  and  functioning  of  the  different  parts 
of  this  organism  and  the  tendencies  and  specific  functions  of 
the  mental  life.  Not  only  the  more  obvious  and  bulky  of  the 
internal  organs,  but  seemingly  insignificant  glands,  the  chemi- 
cal condition  of  the  blood,  the  presence  of  bacteria  in  unsus- 
pected places,  and  a  hundred  different  abnormal  conditions  of 
the   tissues,   determine   the   character  of   the   conscious   states. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  249 

Secret  irritations  in  remote  places  of  the  body  may  upset  the 
brain's  functioning,  and  lead  to  melancholia,  mania,  or  other 
insane  conditions.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  these  changes  in 
nutrition  and  organic  structure  appear  to  be,  in  man's  case, 
essentially  like  the  processes  which  go  on  in  every  form  of  liv- 
ing substance.  The  living  cells  behave  with  a  complete  in- 
difference to  the  high  service  which  they  are  to  render  by  found- 
ing and  guiding  the  self-conscious,  self-determining,  Mind  in 
its  unique  course  of  development.  Important  organs  may  be 
lost,  and  from  the  theoretical  point  of  view,  they  may  be  trans- 
portable from  place  to  place,  or  from  one  human  Self  to  an- 
other; but  if  the  more  primary  conditions  of  organic  life  can  be 
secured,  the  mind  continues,  with  a  seeming  indifference,  to 
exist  essentially  unimpaired.  One's  stomach  may  give  one  pain ; 
one's  liver  may  impart  to  consciousness  a  tinge  of  melan- 
choly; one's  heart  may  make  one  bold  or  timid;  but  none  of 
these  organs  seem  to  have  the  power  either  to  make,  or  to 
unmake,  the  reality  of  one's  Self. 

All  this,  we  are  told,  may  be  true  enough,  outside  of  the 
central  nervous  system;  and  especially  beyond  and  below  the 
gray  convoluted  rind  which  constitutes  the  hemispheres  of 
the  human  brain.  But  is  not  the  relation  between  Mind  and 
Brain  such  that  the  impairment  and  destruction  of  the  latter 
necessitates  the  impairment  and  cessation  of  the  other?  Again 
it  must  be  admitted  that,  as  to  an  intimate  connection  be- 
tween the  functioning  of  this  organ — or  rather,  collection  of 
organs — and  those  activities  in  which  the  very  reality  of  men- 
tal life  consists,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  And  from  the  scien- 
tific point  of  view,  the  connection,  in  order  to  be  viewed  as 
having  any  significance  for  reality,  must  be  considered  as  a 
causal  connection. 

About  the  conclusions  which  follow  from  the  facts,  and  which 
affect  the  hope  of  immortality  as  dependent  upon  the  meta- 
physics of  Mind,  tiiese  two  truths  must  be  kept  constantly  in 
view.     And,  first,  those  unique  activities  in  which  the  develop- 


250  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ment  of  the  mental  life  essentially  consists  cannot  possibly  be 
conceived  of  as  having  an  organic  origin.  For  its  life  of 
sensation  and  motion  the  Self  is  obviously  dependent  upon  the 
integrity  of  the  organism;  and  since  all  the  rest  of  the  organ- 
ism, so  far  as  it  affects  consciousness,  reports  itself  in,  and 
is  controlled  from,  the  nervous  centres,  this  life  of  sensation 
and  motion  is  most  immediately  dependent  upon  the  integrity 
and  normal  functioning  of  the  brain.  But  the  more  unique 
and  uniquely  essential  activities,  such  as  the  mind  attains,  do 
not  seem  to  stand  in  the  same  relation  of  dependence.  With- 
out sight,  one  cannot  know  a  visible  world  ;  witliout  hearing, 
one  cannot  know  the  world  of  sound.  But  a  ITcllen  Keller 
m-ay  attain  a  more  highly  developed  mental  life  than  the  major- 
ity of  human  beings  who  have  normal  faculties  of  hearing  and 
sight.  The  Self-hood  of  such  a  person  is,  indeed,  restricted  in 
important  ways,  as  respects  its  knowledge  of  other  selves  and 
self-like  things.  But  as  a  self-conscious  and  rational  Mind,  it 
may  show  an  amazing  independence  of  these  restrictions.  And, 
in  no  case,  can  we  conceive  of  any  such  relations  between  self- 
consciousness,  recognitive  memory,  rational  inference,  and  the 
moral,  aesthetical,  and  religious  sentiments  and  ideals,  as  will 
permit  us  to  regard  the  mental  life  as  accounted  for  by  any  kind 
of  functioning  on  the  part  of  any  kind  of  organism. 

Second :  modern  cerebral  physiology  and  surgery  seem  to 
be  pointing  the  way  toward  a  larger  view  of  tlie  relative  inde- 
pendence of  mind,  of  the  hemispheres  of  the  brain,  and  of 
an  enlarged  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of  mind  over  even 
these  crowning  structures  of  the  central  nervous  system.  If 
life  can  be  kept  going,  the  developed  Mind,  it  would  appear, 
can  dispense  with  considerable  portions  of  the  brain  substance, 
without  surrender  of  those  forms  of  activity  in  which  its  es- 
sential being  is  known  to  consist.  Recently,  there  have  been 
cases  of  cerebral  surgery  without  anaesthetics,  in  which  the 
self-conscious  life  has  proceeded  without  interruption,  while 
parts  of  these  hemispheres,  most  important  for  sensation  and 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  MIND  251 

motion,  have  been  largely  excised.  And  when  either  disease 
or  surgery  makes  the  demand  for  a  transference  of  function 
to  other  contiguous  or  corresponding  areas  of  the  substance  of 
the  hemispheres,  no  other  form  of  stimulation  and  final  con- 
trol is  so  powerful  as  that  of  the  self-conscious,  self-deter- 
mining mind. 

In  a  word,  the  old  theological  doctrine,  which  less  than  a 
half-century  ago  seemed  so  likely  to  be  totally  discredited  by 
the  physiological  and  psycho-physical  sciences,  is  now  gathering 
new  evidence  to  its  support  from  the  discoveries  of  these  same 
sciences.  One  may  elect  to  say,  with  more  boldness  than  one 
could  a  generation  ago,  that  the  human  brain  is  the  organ, 
rather  than  the  producer,  or  true  cause,  of  man's  mental  and 
spiritual  life.  Metaphysics  can  indeed  give  no  demonstration 
of  the  immortality  of  the  Mind.  But  metaphysics  does  so  ex- 
pound its  real  nature  as  to  show  that  the  larger  Nature,  from 
whose  womb  it  comes,  and  in  whose  bosom  it  reposes,  has  not 
revealed  to  modern  science  the  impossibility  of  its  being  linked 
to  a  physical  organism  in  a  wholly  separable  way.  Even  sci- 
ence may  soon  come  much  more  considerably  than  at  present, 
to  encourage  the  rational  hope,  in  the  individual,  of  achieving 
m  immortal  life. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MATTER  AND  MIND:    NATURE  AND  SPIRIT 

It  is  now  time  to  bring  together  the  metaphysical  frag- 
ments of  the  preceding  chapters,  and  once  more  attempt 
their  union  in  one  consistent  theory  of  reality.  We  have  hith- 
erto discussed  the  problems  offered  by  particular  Things,  and 
individual  Selves,  both  as  organic  existences  and  as  self-devel- 
oping and  self-determining  Minds,  with  a  view  to  answer 
the  general  question  of  metaphysics:  What  is  it  really  to  be? 
It  has  been  shown  that  every  existence  has,  on  the  one  hand,  a 
certain  being-in-itself ;  and,  on  the  other,  that  this  being  is 
an  existence  within  a  system  of  beings,  no  one  of  which  can  be 
known,  or  even  conceived  of,  as  independent  of  the  others.  The 
term,  "  being-in-itself,"  in  anything  like  the  Kantian  sense, 
may  indeed  justly  be  subject  to  objections.  Things,  as  beings- 
in-themselves  ("things-in-themselves ")  cannot  be  spoken  of 
as  either  postulated  or  conceivable.  The  very  word  "  Thing  " 
implies  the  correlate  of  cognitive  activity.  On  the  other  hand, 
to  claim  that  even  those  things  which  are  best  known,  are 
dependent  for  their  reality  upon  man's  knowing  them,  is  so 
shocking  to  common-sense,  and  so  foreign  to  the  findings  of 
the  psychology  of  perception,  that  the  most  extreme  subjec- 
tivism cannot  explain  the  term  reality  so  as  to  give  it  consistency 
even  in  its  own  system  of  metaphysics. 

But  minds,  as  truly  although  not  in  the  same  way  as  things, 
take  their  part  in  the  Being  of  the  One  World.  And  like  things, 
although  not  on  the  same  terms,  minds  have  a  certain  nature, 
or  real  existence  of  their  own;  while  they  are,  of  course,  de- 
pendent upon  things  for  their  existence  and  for  the  character 
of  their  development;  and  they  are  dependently  related  to  each 

252 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      253 

other  in  the  social  system.  No  human  mind,  or  spirit,  is  known 
to  exist,  except  as  in  and  through  the  system  of  so-called  mate- 
rial existences ;  nor  can  such  a  mind,  or  spirit,  attain  or  express 
its  typical  characteristics  without  intercourse  with  other  human 
minds,  or  spirits.  Out  of  the  same  Being  of  the  World,  and 
as  a  product  of  its  evolution,  has  come  man,  as  mind;  and  all 
the  spiritual  developments  of  the  human  race  in  history.  These 
are  facts;  and  metaphysics,  as  a  theory  of  Reality,  must  some- 
how manage  to  take  them  all  into  its  account.  It  cannot,  on 
the  one  hand,  leave  out  of  its  reckonings  the  chemico-physical 
theories,  in  their  efforts  to  discover  how  all  kinds  of  things 
are  constituted,  and  under  what  conditions  they  have  come  to 
be  as  science  now  actually  finds  them  to  be.  If  the  chemico- 
physical  sciences  attempt  to  cover  with  their  doctrine  of  forces, 
laws,  and  measured  relations  of  space  and  time,  the  living 
organism  with  which  the  mind  appears  as  connected,  this 
doctrine  must  be  welcomed,  so  far  as  its  truth  can  be  substan- 
tiated. On  the  other  hand,  all  the  researches  of  these  sciences 
make  an  increasing  impression  of  inadequacy,  when  they  at- 
tempt to  frame  themselves  into  a  theory  of  the  quite  unique 
reality,  which  is  constituted  and  developed  by  the  peculiar 
forms  of  activity  in  which  the  existence  of  the  mind  is  re- 
vealed to  itself  directly;  and  indirectly,  to  other  minds.  Such 
activities  seem  to  transcend  all  that  can  properly  be  ascribed  to 
any  Thing,  or  collection  of  things. 

How,  then,  shall  Its  Reality  be  conceived  of,  so  as  to  make 
it  appear  capable,  not  only  of  evolving  such  a  system  of  things 
and  thing-like  existences,  as  the  World  is  actually  known  to 
be,  but  also  of  developing  a  race  of  beings  which  have  such 
mental  and  spiritual  characteristics  as  the  human  race  is  known 
to  have  gained  and  expressed  during  the  course  of  human  his- 
tory. The  World,  as  far  as  man  knows  it,  or  can  know  it,  is 
One.  What  sort  of  a  One  World  can  make  itself  one  in  such 
a  characteristic  way? 

In  seeking  for  some  satisfactory  collective  term,  which  shall 


254  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

seem  to  express  the  whole  essence  of  the  World's  true  Being, 
one  has  a  choice  of  the  four  examples,  which  stand  at  the 
head  of  this  chapter.  Thus  one  may  begin  witli  the  conviction 
that  the  conception  of  "  Matter  "  can  be  made  so  full  of  con- 
tent as  to  serve  for  the  needed  explanatory  principle.  Then 
one  will  argue  with  one's  self  somewhat  as  follows:  There 
are,  indeed,  individual  human  minds  really  in  existence.  But 
after  sufficiently  minimizing  their  capacities  and  emphasizing 
their  limitations,  one  may  conclude  that  the  mysterious  sub- 
strate of  material  things  has  within  it  the  "  promise  and  po- 
tency "  of  man's  spiritual  life,  as  well  as  of  every  other  form 
of  organic  or  inorganic  existence.  Thus  Matter  may  be  said 
to  have  made,  or  to  have  evolved,  IMind.  But  when  it  is  more 
clearly  seen  how  much  this  conception  of  matter  involves  that 
is  actually  characteristic  of  mind,  one  may  choose  another  of 
the  several  courses  open  to  human  thought:  One  may  either 
regard  mind  as,  so  to  say,  unconscious  or  asleep,  within  matter 
(^lind  is  "immanent"  in  Matter);  or  else  one  may  turn 
about  the  conclusion,  and  assert  that  it  is  mind  which  gives 
reality  to  matter  and  which  accounts  for  all  its  evolutionary 
processes.  In  both  of  these  cases,  however,  some  collective 
term  which  is  more  comprehensive  than  either  of  the  two, 
wlien  they  are  brought  into  contrast  or  combined  together, 
seems  desirable.  The  word  Nature  offers  itself  as  such  a  term. 
And  now  Nature,  taken  as  a  collective  term,  must  include  the 
essential  characteristics  of  all  things  and  of  all  human  minds, 
if  it  is  to  aiTord  the  explanatory  principle  for  both  kinds  of 
real  beings.  Things  are,  of  course,  natural  evolutions,  chil- 
dren of  Nature,  in  the  largo.  But  so  are  human  spirits  as 
well.  The  difficult  question  then  arises:  Does  the  Spirit  in 
Nature  know  Itself  as  Spirit?  Is  Nature  to  be  conceived  of  as 
a  self-conscious  and  rational  Spirit;  and,  as  such,  the  sufficient 
Ground  of  all  spiritual  life  and  dc\cIopnient  ?  Or,  is  it  only 
potential  Spirit,  which  comes  to  actuality  in  the  particular 
spirits  of  individual  men?     In  a  word:     Is  Spirit,  as  a  col- 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  Sl'JUlT      255 

lective  term  and  applicable  to  the  whole  of  Nature,  an  impos- 
sible or  even  absurd  conception? 

Let  us  now  lollow  hrieily  along  the  path  of  these  inquiries, 
in  the  order  in  which  they  have  just  been  proposed.  The 
word  "  Matter,"  in  its  collective  use  and  as  applied  to  aJl 
nuiterial  existences,  is  confessedly  a  pure  abstraction.  There 
really  are  innumerable  material  existences,  of  an  indefinite 
number  of  kinds,  ceaselessly  undergoing  changes  of  relations, 
according  to  an  indefinite  number  of  so-called  laws.  But  there 
is  no  such  reality  as  Matter  in  general.  Indeed,  "  it  is  proper 
to  speak  of  the  term  matter,  only  as  resulting  from  the  second 
degree  of  abstractness,  since  it  stands  for  a  grouping  of  con- 
ceptions, each  of  Avliich  is  derived  from  many  individual  acts  of 
our  experience  with  tilings."^  Our  inquiry,  then,  becomes: 
What  characteristics  of  all  material  things  are  known  to  man, 
which  are  sufficient  to  explain  the  existence  and  development 
of  human  minds,  in  human  history,  as  well  as  the  evolution  of 
things  themselves?  In  a  word:  What  really  is  this  so-called 
matter;  and  what  can  it  alone  do?  When  we  are  told  by  a 
physicist  like  Sir  William  Thomson :  "  We  cannot  of  course 
give  a  definition  of  matter  which  will  satisfy  the  metaphysi- 
cian," our  reply  is :  "  But  this  is  the  very  kind  of  a  definition 
which  the  mind  insists  upon;  because  it  is  seeking  to  find  a 
conception  which  embodies  metaphysics,  as  a  theory  of  reality." 

Now  the  most  distinctive  and  important  characteristic  of  all 
matter  is  its  massivencss,  or  its  quality  of  having  mass;  and 
from  this,  as  secondary  characteristics,  inseparable  from  mass, 
are  derived  the  qualities  of  solidity,  inertia,  momentum,  weight, 
etc.  But  all  changes  in  these  secondary  qualities  do  not  affect, 
they  rather  assume,  the  continuity  and  unalterableness  of  mass. 
As  formally  constituted,  any  particular  material  body  can 
be  put  out  of  existence;  the  characteristics  of  its  energizing 

1  See  the  Chapter  on  "  Matter "  in  the  author's  Theory  of 
Reality,  from  wliich  the  quotations,  unless  otherwise  specified,  are 
taken. 


256  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

may  be  profoundly  changed ;  it  may  be  rendered  quite  unrecog- 
nizable by  the  senses  which  were  once  familiar  with  it;  or  it 
may  be  made  impossible  of  recognition  by  any  of  the  senses. 
But  its  mass  cannot  be  annihilated  or  diminished.  What 
now  is  meant  when  it  is  said  tliat  all  matter  has  mass?  Plainly, 
it  is  meant  at  least  to  say  that  all  material  things  are  quantities 
which  may  be  measured ;  and  which  must  be  considered  as 
measurable,  whether  man  can  get  at  them  to  measure  them, 
or  not.  But  this  is  not  all  which  is  true  of  matter  as  having 
mass;  for  space  and  time,  considered  as  empty  of  all  matter, 
are  also  measurable,  and  the  measurements  to  which  they  can 
be  subjected  are  much  more  "  pure  "  than  any  which  can  be 
applied  to  masses  of  matter.  Besides,  we  do  not  content  our- 
selves with  saying  that  matter  is  mass, — that,  and  nothing 
more.     The  rather  is  it  defined  as  "  that  which  has  "  the  mass. 

If  matter  were  simply  massive,  it  would  be  dead;  indeed, 
its  mass  could  never  be  appreciated  or  measured.  To  get  itself 
appreciated  and  to  be  measured,  it  must  do  something;  and  it 
must  do  something  to  our  human  minds,  for  we  men,  as  minds, 
are  the  appreciators  and  measurers  of  matter,  whether  as 
"  plain  minds,"  in  common-sense  ways,  or  with  all  the  mathe- 
matics and  refined  instrumentation  of  the  modern  physical 
sciences. 

Therefore,  as  Thomson  and  Tait  tell  us:  "Matter  is  that 
which  can  be  perceived  by  the  senses,  or  that  which  can  be  acted 
upon  by,  or  can  exert  force."  And  now,  if  we  change  both  the 
"  ors "  in  this  sentence  to  an  "  and,"  we  learn  that  matter 
is  known  by  us  through  the  senses  as  being  acted  upon,  and 
also  as  exerting  force.  Force,  or  energy,  must  somehow  be  im- 
parted to  mass,  in  order  that  matter  mav  not  be  and  remain  a 
reality  that  counts  for  nothing — just  dead,  inert,  and  useless 
"  ptuff."  Therefore,  another  distinguislied  physicist,  Clerk- 
Maxwell,  assures  us  in  a  sentence  already  quoted :  "  All  we 
know  about  matter  relates  to  the  series  of  phenomena  in  which 
energy  is  transferred  from  one  portion  of  matter  to  another, 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      257 

till  in  some  part  of  the  series  our  bodies  are  affected,  and  we 
become  conscious  of  sensation." 

But  it  has  already  been  made  absolutely  clear  tliat  the  en- 
tire conception  of  force,  or  energy,  as  separable  from  things, 
or  transmissible  from  one  thing  to  another,  is  only  a  convenient 
figure  of  speech ;  and  that  to  suppose  that  this  figure  of  speech 
has  its  correlate  in  any  actual  transaction  in  the  world  of 
real  things,  is  to  suppose  an  absurdity.  We  are  at  once,  then, 
compelled  to  agree  with  Du  Bois-Reymond  when  he  says: 
"  Separately,  Force  and  Matter  do  not  exist " ;  or  with  another 
writer  who  declares :  "  Force  is  the  dynamic  aspect  of  ex- 
istence, the  correlate  of  Matter." 

But  to  recognize  mass  and  energy  as  the  inherent  and  uni- 
versal characteristics  of  so-called  "  Matter "  does  not  as  yet 
endow  the  latter  with  a  sufficient  outfit  of  capacities  and  powers 
to  account  for  the  existence  and  development  of  the  entire 
world  as  composed  of  things  and  of  self-conscious,  rational 
minds.  For  in  order  to  produce  and  develope  particular  things, 
and  species  of  things,  this  "  lump-sum  "  of  mass  and  energy 
must  distribute,  and  arrange,  and  rearrange  itself,  according 
to  ideas  and  in  obedience  to  laws.  Plain  traces  of  a  striving 
after  ideals  would  also  seem  to  characterize  some  of  the  paths 
followed  in  this  process  of  self-evolution.  But  over  and  over 
again,  in  discussing  the  metaphysics  involved  in  the  very  nature 
of  every  particular  thing,  there  has  been  discovered  the  neces- 
sity for  recognizing  mind,  as  a  force,  in  a  form  to  which  we 
have  given  the  vague  phrasing  of  an  "  immanent  idea."  It  now 
appears  that  matter,  without  the  necessary  equipment  of  im- 
manent ideas,  and  of  some  sort  of  plan,  concealed  within  it,  or 
forced  upon  and  dominating  it  from  the  outside,  could  no 
more  build  and  develope  a  world  of  things  and  minds,  than 
could  some  particular  collection  of  molecules,  or  atoms,  con- 
sidered as  mere  dead  matter,  or  lawless  energy,  construct  any 
particular  thing. 

Mind   and  flatter  must,  therefore,  somehow   combine   and 


258  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

co-operate,  in  order  to  account  for  a  collection  of  existences  and 
developments  similar  to  that  which  belongs  to  the  system  known 
to  men  in  the  growth  of  the  particular  sciences.  "  Matter  " 
must  be  something  more  than  is  ordinarily  understood  by  mere 
matter;  it  must  be  matter,  including  some,  at  least,  of  the 
potencies  of  what  man  knows  himself  to  be  as  a  mind,  if  it 
is  to  serve  man  as  the  one  explanatory  principle  of  all  the 
existences  which  are  made  into  some  sort  of  a  unity  by  this 
same  principle.  Need  it  be  said  again  that  this  effective  Prin- 
ciple must  be  somewhat  more  than  a  first  Premiss,  or  logical 
principle;  it  must  be  an  architectonic  and  developing  Force? 

The  word  matter,  therefore,  shall  be  abandoned;  let  us  turn 
again  to  the  word  "  Nature "  as  promising  the  suitable  col- 
lective term  for  which  we  are  seeking.  And  undoubtedly,  if 
this  word  is  made  full  enough  of  the  right  kind  of  content,  it 
can  cover  a  conception  which  will  satisfy  the  mind  as  the  basic 
truth  in  metaphysics. 

There  are  several  reasons  why  the  word  Nature  seems  to  be 
a  much  better  word  than  matter  to  serve  as  a  collective  term 
for  all  that  is  necessary  to  explain  the  existence  and  history 
of  things,  animals  and  men,  as  they  are  all  known  by  man, 
in  the  unity  of  the  One  World.  Among  these  reasons  the  fol- 
lowing are  prominent.  In  the  first  place;  of  the  two  terms. 
Nature  is  the  more  elastic  and  expansive.  To  deny  the  ex- 
i?tence  of  the  immaterial,  of  that  which  really  is  not  matter, 
is  usually  the  sign  of  a  narrow  and  dangerous  bigotry  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  physico-chemical  sciences.  For  there  is  life, 
and  consciousness,  and  self-conscious  mind,  in  the  world;  and 
these  existences  will  always  be  regarded  in  the  popular  apprehen- 
sion, as  being  non-material.  With  all  their  resources  of  micro- 
scope, and  refined  methods  of  chemical  analysis,  and  of  the 
detection  of  hitherto  inappreciable  physical  operations,  these 
sciences  have  never  as  yet  succeeded  in  mastering  the  full  ex- 
planation of  the  most  insignificant  living  form,  or  even  of  a 
single  living  cell.     The  first  conscious  sensation  still  appears 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      259 

to  be  an  event  in  the  world's  history,  as  unappreciable  and  un- 
statable  in  terms  of  physics  and  chemistry,  as  it  appeared  when 
these  same  sciences  had  not  attained  any  of  their  modern  con- 
quests over  the  field  of  matter :  while  to  be  really  self-conscious 
and  self-determining,  as  the  developed  mind  of  a  man  comes 
to  be,  is  a  triumph  over  the  merely  material,  in  the  contrast 
with  which,  all  the  triumphs  of  the  sciences  of  matter  in  their 
attempts  to  explain  this  mind,  seem  insignificant  or  absurd. 
At  least,  whatever  certain  individual  enthusiasts  among  the 
physicists  and  chemists  may  claim  for  their  discoveries,  in  the 
thoughts  of  the  people  and  of  the  few  who  reflect,  life,  con- 
sciousness, and  mind,  cannot  be  covered  by  the  term,  Matter, 
when  this  term  is  properly  employed. 

But  the  same  lack  of  elasticity,  as  it  were,  and  of  expansive- 
ness,  cannot  be  charged  against  the  conception  of  Nature, 
when  this  is  employed  in  the  collective  way.  Indeed,  most  of 
those  who  would  not  think  of  calling  consciousness  and  mind 
material  entities,  or  even  phenomena  of  the  material  order, 
vigorously  resist  any  effort  to  take  them  out  of  the  sphere  of 
Nature.  The  super-natuTal,  or  ear/ra-natural  is  at  present  in 
favor  with  no  manner  of  science, — ^not  even  with  those  theo- 
logians who  are  more  anxious  to  make  their  peace  with  the 
"  scientists  "  than  with  the  vice-gerents  of  Heaven.  Of  course, 
however,  this  genial  and  expansive  use  of  the  word  as  a  suffi- 
ciently comprehensive  and — shall  we  not  say? — energetic  term, 
only  raises  again  the  same  old  question :  What  kind  of  a  Na- 
ture must  this  be  which  can  develope,  not  only  so  many  forms 
of  conscious  life,  but  also  a  race  of  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  spirits? 

Another  reason  for  the  generally  accepted  preference  of  the 
word  Nature  as  a  collective  term  is  undoubtedly  to  be 
found  in  the  greatly  superior  appeal  which  it  makes  to  the 
imagination.  Many  poets  have  always  delighted  to  sing  the 
.praises  of  nature  as  the  Giver  of  Life,  the  Inspirer,  the  Bene- 
factor,  and    even   the   Author,   of   genius    and   of    all   gifted 


360  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

minds;  in  imaginative  literature,  personified  nature  is  the 
bountiful  Source  of  the  material  goods  wliich  make  men  com- 
fortable and  happy.  Comparatively  few  have  followed  Lucretius 
and  celebrated  in  poetry  the  affinities  and  separations  and,  as 
it  were,  social  quarrels  and  "  makings-up-again  "  of  the  atoms, 
in  a  purely  materialistic  way.  It  is  true  that  the  trained  stu- 
dent of  physics  or  chemistry  both  observes  and  imagines  proc- 
esses in  matter  which  are  transcendently  beautiful,  mysterious, 
and  worthy  to  excite  admiration.  It  is  no  wonder  that  he  is 
tempted  to  think,  if  matter  can  do  this,  why  can  it  not  do  any- 
thing? Why  can  it  not  make  itself  conscious;  make  itself 
to  feel  and  think;  make  itself  to  be  a  real  Self,  a  self-con- 
scious and  self-determining  mind?  It  certainly  weaves  a  body 
for  this  mind ;  and  this  body  is  intimately  connected  with 
the  development  of  the  mental  life.  But  the  truth  remains 
that  even  the  influences  of  such  an  exciting  character  for  the 
scientific  as  well  as  the  poetical  imagination  do  not  easily  over- 
come the  objection  which  the  human  spirit  itself  opposes  to 
being  considered  as  a  product  of  what  science  observes,  de- 
scribes and  measures,  as  mere  spiritless  matter.  When  we 
say  "  Nature,"  however,  we  seem  again  to  recover  the  rights 
belonging  to  poetical  license.  All  the  unfathomable  mystery 
of  life,  of  consciousness,  and  of  self-conscious  mind,  can  be 
concealed,  and  ever  lovingly  fostered,  under  the  protection  of 
this  term.  The  imagination  is  delighted  with,  and  at  the  same 
time  baffled  by,  this  limitless  atmosphere  of  mystery.  As  to 
matter;  why  I  may  hold  it  in  my  hand,  may  strike  it  with  my 
foot,  and  buy  and  sell  it  in  the  form  of  visible  and  tangible 
things,  or  may  measure,  weigh,  and  otherwise  manipulate  it 
in  my  laboratory.  But  as  to  Nature,  all  this  is  quite  another 
affair. 

There  is  a  third  reason  for  our  preference  of  the  Avord  Na- 
ture as  a  collective,  all-embracing,  and  all-interpreting  term. 
It  lends  itself  much  better  to  tlie  process  of  personification, 
And  this  is,  indeed,  the  supreme  and  most  conclusive  of  the 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      2G1 

three  reasons.  Not  only  in  a  concealed  and  furtive  way,  in 
the  terms  of  science,  but  in  an  avowed  manner,  in  the  terms 
of  poetry,  religion  and  philosophy,  in  order  to  be  considered 
a  satisfactory  collective  term  explanatory  of  both  things  and 
men,  Nature  needs  to  be  personified — made  Self-like — in  a 
more  complete  and  final  way.  Religion  has  done  this  by  per- 
sonifying and  deifying  natural  objects,  and  natural  forces,  of 
many  varied  kinds;  but  at  last,  in  terms  of  monotheism,  by 
creating  the  conception  of  an  eternal  and  universal  Spirit, 
God  as  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Eedeemer  of  the  world.  And 
early  philosophy,  like  all  poetry,^  regarded  Nature  as  the  Mother 
both  gracious  and  terrible,  of  all  things  and  all  men.  "  For," 
says  Parmcnides,  "  she  rules  over  all  painful  birth  and  all  be- 
getting, driving  the  female  to  the  embrace  of  the  male,  and 
the  male  to  the  embrace  of  the  female." 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  human  thought  is  on  the  whole 
reluctant  to  believe  that  man's  spirit,  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment, can  have  its  origin  in,  or  account  rendered  by,  any  prin- 
ciple which  does  not  itself  include  the  characteristics  of  Spirit 
in  an  essential  and  dynamic  way.  Since  the  word  Nature  does 
represent   to   thought   and    imagination    a   conception    capable 

1  Biichner  in  his  enthusiastic  poetizing  and  personifying  of  Mat- 
ter, proposes  a  song  in  its  praise  (see  "  Force  and  Matter,"  Eng. 
trans  ,  p.  55) : 

"  1st  dem  nicht,  was  ihr  Materie  nennt, 
Der   Welt   urkraftig   Element, 
Aus  dem,  was  immer  lebt  and  webt, 
Empor  zu  Licht  und  Bewegung  strebt? " 

But  the  terms  in  which  Goethe  makes  Faust  address  the  Un- 
knowable One,  commend  themselves  much  better  both  to  poetry 
and  to  philosophy: 

"  Who  dares  express  him? 

The  All-enfolder, 
The  All-upholder; 
Enfolds,  upholds  He  not 
Thee,  me,  Himself?  " 


263  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  such  inclusion,  it  is  held  to  he  mucli  preferahle  to  the  word 
matter.  Consciousness,  and  self-conscious  mind,  if  not  all 
forms  of  life,  demand  the  characteristics  for  their  explanation, 
which  man  finds  in  himself  as  a  self-conscious,  self-determin- 
ing mind,  or  spirit. 

This  naive  conclusion  of  the  popular  reflection,  which  finds 
expression  in  so  much  of  poetry  and  in  the  elaborations  of 
philosophy,  we  hold  to  be  also  scientifically  true.  In  evidence 
of  this  truth  we  shall  at  present  only  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  use  of  the  word  Nature,  by  both  science  and  philos- 
ophy, actually  makes  it  inclusive  of  Spirit;  and  this  is  really 
why  reflection  has  chosen  this  word  as  the  more  genial,  plastic, 
and  suitable  term.^ 

As  soon  as  the  significance  of  the  enlargement  which  is 
given  to  the  conception  of  Nature,  as  a  collective  explanatory 
term,  is  duly  recognized,  the  same  distinctions  have  to  be  in- 
sisted upon  anew.  "  The  Absolute  Whole  divides  itself  again 
into  two  parts.  These  parts  are  not  indeed  separate  and  dis- 
tinct halves  of  a  total  sphere;  nor  can  they  be  kept  asunder  so 
as  to  remain  independent  of  each  other  for  their  more  com- 
plete significance  and  their  more  effective  action.  The  rather 
are  they  two  interdependent  aspects  of  the  same  totality  as 
seen  from  two  equally  necessary  points  of  view.  These  points 
of  view  are  the  more  internal  and  subjective  and  the  more  ex- 
ternal and  objective.  Nature,  regarded  as  an  Absolute  Whole 
(system  of  things  and  spirits,  complete-in-itself)  becomes  two- 
fold; it  is  no  longer  simply  nature  as  the  common  breeding- 
place  of  life,  but  as  herself  a  Universal  Life.  Her  being  is 
no  longer  looked  upon  as  the  undifferentiated  medium  or  soul 
in  which  all  development  takes  place.  She  is  herself  the 
Ground — the  inner  principle  of  development.  Nature  is  no 
longer  just  a  system  of  things  already  formed,  or  considered 

1  This  argument  is  stated  more  at  length  in  Chap.  XVII,  "  Na- 
ture and  Spirit,"  in  the  author's  Theory  of  Reality,  from  which 
the  sentences  in  quotation  are  taken. 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      2G3 

from  the  outside  as  a  mere  collection  of  data,  arranged  in  a 
series,  in  unending  time.  She  is  an  architectonic  Force,  form- 
ative and  progressive  according  to  ideas.  Like  the  pure  Be- 
ing of  the  Greek  philosopher,  she  is  both  Subject  and  objects, — 
Maker  and  things  made."  Or  as  Spinoza  in  more  modern 
times  would  express  the  truth:  Nature  has  become  in  some 
sort  divided  against  herself;  her  total  Being  includes  natura 
naturata,  and  natura  naturans;  a  gross  lot  of  created  things 
that  may  be  arranged  and  observed  as  in  a  natural  system  (a 
visible,  tangible  nature)  and  a  creative  Nature,  or  invisible, 
intangible  and  spirit-like  power  of  evolving,  in  varied  systematic 
ways,  such  visible  and  tangible  things. 

Thus  has  the  metaphysics,  both  of  philosophy  and  of  science, 
recognized  two  groups  of  conceptions  which  must  somehow 
be  combined  and  made  to  work  in  harmony,  if  we  are  to  have 
any  collective  term  which  will  begin  to  hold  the  full  content 
of  the  conception  for  which  we  are  seeking.  If  Spirit,  out- 
side of  and  aloof  from  nature,  will  not  serve  for  such  a  term; 
then  Nature  that  has  no  spirit  in  it,  must  be  deemed  equally 
impotent.  For  Nature,  even  when  regarded  as  an  eternal  but 
unspiritual  Force,  does  in  fact  produce  by  her  supremest  efforts 
something  spiritual,  or  rather  an  indefinite  number  of  spirits; 
and  these  spiritual  beings  come  to  understand  her,  and  to  sym- 
pathize with  her,  and  to  supplement  her  in  her  w^ork  of  evolv- 
ing life  and  of  driving  man  along  his  course  in  history.  Na- 
ture cannot  then,  since  to  be  this  kind  of  a  force  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  what  man  knows  as  spirit,  be  really  and  completely 
"  unspiritual." 

One  of  the  more  ardent  and  uncompromising  of  the  advocates 
of  the  principles  of  scientific  Naturalism  ^  once  declared :  "  For 
myself  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  term  '  Nature  '  covers  the 
totality  of  that  which  is.  The  world  of  psychical  phenomena 
appears  to  me  as  much  a  part  of  '  Nature '  as  the  world  of 

1  Professor  Huxley,  In  his  "  Science  and  Christian  Tradition 
Essays,"  p.  38f. 


264  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

physical  phenomena ;  and  I  am  unable  to  perceive  any  justifi- 
cation for  cutting  the  Universe  into  two  halves,  one  natural 
and  one  super-natural."  But  such  a  statement  as  this,  however 
it  may  seem  to  be  an  adequate  refutation  of  certain  theological 
views,  neither  expresses  correctly  nor  suggests  happily  the  an- 
swer to  the  problem  of  metaphysics  as  a  theory  of  reality. 
Ecal  spiritual  beings  exist  (that  "psychical  phenomena" 
occur  is  an  inadequate  way  of  stating  the  data  of  the  prob- 
lem) ;  these  beings  develope  within  the  sphere  for  which  the 
collective  term  Nature  is  proposed  as  a  principle  of  ex- 
planation. Immediately  the  problem  becomes  not  one  of  sep- 
arating this  sphere  into  two,  as  it  were,  independent  halves; 
but  of  comprehending  it  in  its  totality  so  that  it  can  seem 
to  bo  a  principle  capable  of  performing  all  the  work  of 
creation  and  development  attributed  to  it.  And  just  as 
the  lower  conception  of  a  matter,  that  seemed  unable  to 
live,  and  to  be  conscious,  and  to  be  mindful  of  itself,  was 
transcended;  so  now  it  is  necessary  to  transcend  the  con- 
ception of  an  unspiritual  nature.  For  unless  nature  is  con- 
ceived of  as  having  the  additional  characteristics  of  spiritual 
being,  it  is  as  inadequate  as  the  conception  of  matter  was  found 
to  be,  to  serve  as  the  one  collective  term  for  all  that  is  real. 

Let  us,  then,  for  the  moment  be  content  to  say:  Spirit 
must  1)6  immanent  in  Nature.  To  get  from  Nature  to  Spirit, 
it  is  necessary  only  to  get  more  deeply  into  Nature.  In  other 
words,  the  needed  principle  is  not  to  be  found  either  in  an  un- 
spiritual nature — falsely  called,  "scientific";  nor  in  the  sep- 
aration of  tlie  One  Universe  into  the  two  halves  of  nature 
and  spirit;  but  in  recognizing  the  truth  that  Spirit  is  the  real 
and  essential  Being  of  so-called  Nature.  In  this  truth  both 
science  and  philosophy  may  agree. 

The  ultimate  problem  of  metaphysics  has  now  made  a  cer- 
tain advance  toward  solution ;  but  it  has  reached  its  most  acute 
and  difficult  stage.  The  very  essence  of  finite  spirit  is  to  be 
actually  self-conscious  and  consciously  self-determining.     And 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      265 

these  spiritual  exercises  and  achievements  are  possible  only  if 
the  conclusion  be  accepted  that  they  are  immanent,  or  poten- 
tial, in  the  Nature  from  which,  and  in  which,  all  spirits  have 
their  being  and  their  development.  But  how  can  such  Spirit 
be  actually  immanent,  as  an  effective  principle,  without  being 
actually  and  actively  exercised?  In  a  word,  how  can  Spirit, 
as  a  collective  term  be  employed  with  reference  to  the  work 
of  Nature,  unless  the  same  Nature  be  understood  to  be  essen- 
tially self-conscious  and  self-determining  Spirit?  To  the  ques- 
tion in  this  form  only  two  answers  are  possible.  Either  we 
must  say  that  the  use  of  the  word  Spirit  as  a  collective  term  la 
a  mere  abstraction,  a  carrying  of  the  process  of  personification 
beyond  the  limit  within  which  there  can  be  any  corresponding 
Ecality;  or  else,  we  must  accept  the  term  in  good  faith,  and 
regard  it  as  setting  the  limit  to  all  metaphysical  conclusions. 
In  the  former  case,  all  the  work  of  human  knowledge,  whether 
ordinary,  scientific,  or  philosophical,  seems  to  have  carried 
the  race  along  lines  of  an  experience  with  self-like  things  and 
an  acquaintance  with  the  inmost  reality  of  humanity,  only  to 
end  in  agnosticism  and  stupefaction.  In  the  latter  case,  the 
mind  is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  ultimate  mystery  of 
existence  in  the  rational  conviction,  and  reasoned  conclusion, 
tliat  the  Being  of  the  World  is  indeed  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  Spirit;  since  it  is  truly  apprehended  by  man  after 
the  analogy  of  his  own  self-conscious  and  self-determining 
spirit. 

No  sane  thinker  would  claim  that  the  use  of  this  collective 
term,  and  the  conception  which  corresponds  to  it, — the  con- 
ception of  Absolute  Spirit — can  be  comprehended  on  all  sides. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  itself  the  conception  in  which  the  ultimate 
mysteries  of  all  being  and  of  all  human  knowledge  are  included. 
As  a  principle  of  explanation  it  cannot,  therefore,  be  made 
to  take  the  place,  or  usurp  the  functions,  of  any — much  less 
of  all  of  the  particular  sciences.  That  it  needs  to  be,  and  that 
it  may  be,  successfully  supported  and  expanded  in  a  manner 


266  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

helpful  to  thought,  and  comforting  to  the  feelings,  hy  consid- 
erations of  fact  and  argument  taken  from  other  branches  of 
philosophy,  we  shall  show  later  on.  But  neither  religious  faith, 
nor  cool,  reflective  thinking,  can  solve  all  mysteries.  Th.e 
particular  sciences  are  even  more  impotent  in  the  same  spheres 
of  explanatory  endeavor.  Indeed,  their  principal  contributions 
to  such  problems  only  increase  the  difficulties  and  the  com- 
plications attending  any  attempt  at  their  solution.  But  this 
is  because  the  more  man  knows  of  particular  realities,  the 
richer  and  more  complex  does  the  World  which  contains  and 
produces  them  all,  of  necessity  appear. 

There  is,  however,  one  objection  to  any  such  theory  of  real- 
ity as  that  to  which  we  have  been,  step  by  step,  led  forward, 
that  requires  a  brief  notice  at  this  point.  It  has  often  been 
urged — although  not  so  much  of  late — that  the  very  conception 
of  an  Absolute  Spirit,  of  the  Being  of  the  World  as  essentially 
self-conscious  and  self-determining,  is  internally  contradictory 
and  intrinsically  absurd.  Against  this  unqualified  negation 
one  might  oppose  the  equally  unqualified  affirmation  of  Lotze: 
that  only  the  Absolute  or  Infinite  can  be  a  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  Spirit,  a  real  Person,  in  the  truest  meaning 
of  the  term.  The  more  modest  answer  of  psychology  would 
seem  to  lie  between,  and  to  depend  with  much  better  assurance 
upon  the  valid  experience  of  what  it  is  really  to  be  a  Mind. 
The  grasp  of  man's  self-consciousness,  and  the  sphere  of  man's 
self-determination,  are  in  fact  limited  in  space  and  time  and 
content,  in  many  ways.  Nor  can  his  mind  imagine,  or  render 
into  actual  terms  of  consciousness,  what  a  life  would  be  like, 
in  which  all  such  limitations  were  wholly  removed.  But  it  docs 
not  appear  that  limitations,  external  to  the  Self  and  im- 
posed from  without,  arc  essential  to  either  self-consciousness 
or  self-determination.  On  the  contrary,  the  more  varied,  con- 
tentful, and  rapid,  are  our  activities  which  are  classed  under 
the  terms,  "  sense-perception  "  or  "  self-consciousness,"  the  more 
of  minds,  or  spirits,  do  we  seem  to  ourselves  really  to  be.     And 


MATTER  AND  MIND:  NATURE  AND  SPIRIT      207 

to  hold  that  Absolute  Spirit  cannot  be,  because  all  its  seem- 
ing self-determinations  must  really  spring  from  its  own  depths 
instead  of  being  actualized  as  limitations  from  without,  would 
seem  to  merit  the  very  charge  of  absurdity  which  the  argu- 
ment itself  is  constructed  in  order  to  enforce.  We  are  at 
present  contented,  therefore,  to  affirm  that  the  conception  of 
the  Being  of  the  World,  as  Absolute  Spirit,  or  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  ]\Iind,  is  not  to  be  thrown  out  of  court, 
as  contrary  to  reason,  because  it  is  not  clearly  representable 
in  human  imagination,  or  mathematically  demonstrable,  or 
capable  of  being  subjected  to  the  tests  of  empirical  science. 
For  it  is  a  conception,  the  argument  for  which  seems  to  har- 
monize with  the  nature  of  all  human  knowledge,  and  with  the 
essential  characteristics  of  all  the  objects  of  such  knowledge. 
Were  particular  things,  not  of  mind,  how  could  they  become 
known  as  actively  they  are  known,  to  minds?  And  were  the 
Nature  in  which  all  spiritual  natures  live  and  move  and  have 
their  being,  not  as  good  as  Personal  Spirit;  how  could  these 
finite  spirits  explain  the  fact  that  they  themselves  are  consti- 
tuted and  developed,  as  they  know  themselves  really  to  be? 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY:  ITS  SPHERE  AND 
PROBLEMS 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  what  human  history  would  have  been 
without  the  commanding  influence  of  human  moral,  artistic, 
and  religious  ideals.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  there  would  have 
been  no  human  history  at  all.  Indeed,  it  is  these  sentiments 
and  ideals,  rather  than  those  ordinarily  grouped  under  the 
physical  and  economic  forces,  which  have  chiefly  characterized 
and  controlled  man's  historical  development;  and  to  them  the 
physical  movements,  whether  peaceful  or  warlike,  and  the 
economical  failures  and  successes  of  humanity,  have  been  largely 
due.  It  is  almost  equally  impossible  to  conjecture  how  the 
world  of  things  would  appear,  and  what  would  he  the  course 
in  evolution  of  the  physical  and  chemical  sciences,  if  man  were 
not  possessed  somehow  of  a  moral,  aesthetical,  and  religious 
nature.  The  World  has  never  seemed  to  him  devoid  of  mys- 
terious and  admirable  forces,  under  the  guidance  of  ideas 
which  ho  could  only  dimly  apprehend  or,  perhaps,  could  not 
even  venture  guesses  about;  but  which  stirred  feeling,  and 
stimulated  ideas,  of  the  beautiful  and  the  sublime.  The  re- 
ligious feelings  of  awe,  worship,  and  desire  for  a  knowledge 
which  may  safely  lead  to  communion  with  invisible  spirits, 
have  universally  been  attached  to  the  conception  of  Nature,  as 
well  as  to  many  of  the  particular  natural  objects  which  seemed 
especially  adapted  to  call  them  forth.  Even  modern  science 
cannot  talk  of  the  grandeur,  orderliness,  mysterious  power,  and 
architectonic  skill,  of  the  things  it  observes  and  measures,  or — 
even  less — of  the  Universe,  of  which  these  things  are  parts  and 
in  whose  life  they  share,  without  appealing  to  the  same  senti- 

268 


ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  269 

ments  and  ideals.  In  a  word,  things — their  natures,  modes  of 
behavior,  relations  under  the  laws  in  a  system — are  scientifi- 
cally known  to  he  real,  in  such  a  way  as  evokes  the  confidence 
that,  to  some  extent  at  least,  they  correspond  to  human  ideals 
of  an  ethico-sesthetical  or  ethico-religious  sort. 

If  now  we  recur  to  the  point  where  the  attempt  was  made 
to  distinguish  the  main  divisions  of  philosophy  (see  p.  30)  it 
appears  that  one  of  these  divisions  was  called  "  Philosophy 
of  the  Real,"  and  another  "  Philosophy  of  the  Ideal."  We 
turn  now  to  the  more  definite  consideration  of  those  problems 
which  appropriately  belong  under  the  latter  term. 

Of  the  problems  which  may  somewhat  readily  be  distinguished 
as  belonging  to  the  Philosophy  of  the  Ideal,  there  are  three 
principal  kinds.  These  give  us  the  three  divisions  of  (1)  Ethics, 
or  Moral  Philosophy,  (2)  ^Esthetics,  and  (3)  the  Philosophy  of 
Ecligion.  Only  in  the  latter  case,  however,  do  we  find  that 
the  reflective  thinking  of  mankind  has  evolved  an  Ideal  of 
such  a  character  that,  its  reality  being  assumed  or  proved, 
philosophy  finds  in  it  the  ultimate  Ground  of  all  that  is  real, 
and  the  realization  of  all  human  ideals.  Since  this  Idea  is 
believed  in,  and  worshipped,  as  God,  the  problem  which  it 
offers  to  reflective  thinking  may  be  called  the  problem  of  "  The 
Absolute,"  or  of  the  "  Ideal-Real." 

Our  first  concern  in  dealing  with  Ethics  as  a  branch  of 
philosophy  is  to  know  what  territory  it  proposes  to  cover;  and 
how  it  proposes  to  deal  with  the  problems  which  it  claims  lie 
within  this  territory.  And  here  at  once  some  difficulty  arises 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  subject.  On  the  one  hand,  philos- 
ophy is  supposed  to  deal  with  matters  of  theory — such  as  a 
theory  of  knowledge,  or  a  theory  of  reality;  and  to  make  use 
of  the  methods  of  reflection  and  speculation.  Only  in  this  way, 
and  then  only  as  a  matter  of  degrees,  does  it  distinguish  itself 
from  the  particular  sciences  which,  as  there  has  been  repeated 
occasion  to  see,  are  all  to  a  degree,  metaphysical.  But  ethics 
— first,  last  and  all  the  time — deals  with  what  is  practical,  or 


270  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

with  doing  in  the  form  of  human  conduct.  Only  as  thoughts, 
feelings,  and  ideas,  are  forms  of  doing,  or  matters  of  a  practical 
sort,  do  they  come  within  the  sphere  of  ethics  at  all.  Even  the 
most  abstract  speculations  of  the  schools  of  ethics,  when  ex- 
amined, turn  out  to  be  for  the  most  part  wranglings  over  ques- 
tions of  psychological  fact,  rather  than  different  essays  in 
guarded  and  thorough  reflective  thinking.  The  tendency  has, 
therefore,  been  on  the  one  hand  to  exclude  ethical  problems  from 
science  because  they  deal  so  much  with  uncertain  data  of  indi- 
vidual opinions  and  do  not  admit  of  scientific  tests;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  discredit  moral  philosophy  as  too  abstract  for 
paying  so  little  attention  to  the  same  data,  as  matters  of 
fact. 

If  the  word  "  science "  is  to  be  confined  to  physical  and 
chemical  investigations,  where  mathematics  and  measurements 
and  careful  use  of  the  external  senses  are  so  important,  ethics 
certainly  cannot  be  classed  as  one  of  the  sciences.  But  the  data 
for  this  study  are  data  of  fact;  and  ethics  is  pre-eminently  a 
study  of  facts,  if  one  may  agree  with  Professor  Wundt  in  say- 
ing: "The  estimate  of  the  value  of  facts  is  also  itself  a  fact, 
and  a  fact  which  must  not  be  overlooked  when  it  is  there  to  see." 
Ethics  is  also  pre-eminently  a  psychological  science;  and  it 
therefore  requires  the  appreciation  and  interpretation  of  facts 
of  the  mental  life,  "  as  such  " — that  is,  as  facts  of  conscious, 
and  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind.  For  this  reason, 
to  endeavor  to  convert  it  into  an  anthropological  or  sociological 
study,  and  so  absorb  it  in  the  sciences  which  complicate  and 
spread  themselves  under  these  terms,  is  quite  to  reverse  the  true 
order  of  procedure.  For  anthropology  itself,  and  even  to  a 
greater  extent,  so-called  sociology,  have  no  claim  to  scientific 
standing  except  as  they  are  compounds  of  psychology,  ethics, 
and  certain  brandies  of  history.  The  external  signs  of  these 
forms  of  man's  ethical  evolution  are  discoverable  by  observation 
and  history;  the  appreciation  and  interpretation  of  them  must 
be  given  by  psychology  and  ethics. 


ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  271 

When  now  the  question  is  raised,  "What  particular  kind  of 
mental  facts,  including  facts  which  are  estimates  of  tlie  vahie 
of  facts,  does  ethics  attempt  to  reduce  to  scientific  form?"  the 
answer  is  not  especially  difficult.  They  are  facts  of  human  con- 
duct. Conduct  expresses  itself,  indeed,  in  a  great  variety  of 
external  ways,  such  as  gesture,  language,  movements  of  the 
bodily  organism,  customs,  institutions,  laws,  religious  observ- 
ances, and  even  scientific  and  philosophical  theories.  But 
these  are  all  signs  of  the  inner  life  of  ideas,  thoughts,  motives, 
and  deeds  of  will;  and  it  is  this  inner  life,  primarily  consid- 
ered, which  has  true  ethical  quality. 

Two  important  distinctions  lie  within  the  sphere,  so  far  as  it 
has  already  been  defined,  of  that  methodical  and  systematic 
study  of  certain  facts  of  the  inner  life  which  may  be  called 
in  a  preliminary  wa}^  the  science  of  ethics.  The  first  of  these 
is  the  distinction  between  facts  which  are  taken  as  mere  facts, 
and  those  facts  which  are  estimates  of  the  value  of  facts;  it  is 
in  this  latter  class  of  facts  that  the  very  essence  of  the  ethical  is 
to  be  found.  Psychology  may  look  at  all  mental  facts,  just 
as  mere  facts,  in  the  same  way  in  which  the  chemical  and  physi- 
cal sciences  aim  to  deal  with  the  facts  falling  within  their  re- 
spective spheres.  But  ethics  cannot  regard  its  facts  solely  in 
this  fashion.  The  moment  you  take  the  ethical  point  of  view, 
you  must  begin  to  speak  of  "  good  "  and  "  bad  " — meaning  by 
this  to  set  up  some  standard  of  value,  to  the  measurement  of 
which  the  facts  in  your  judgment,  must  come.  And  let  it  be 
noticed  that  this  standard  cannot  be  the  truth,  or  f actuality, 
of  the  facts  themselves.  That  is  to  say,  the  occurrences  of  the 
inner  life,  whether  known  by  self-consciousness  or  by  external 
signs,  are  adjudged  to  have  some  kind  of  worth,  or  worthless- 
ness,  according  as  they  do,  or  do  not,  conform  to  some  kind  of 
a  standard.  They  are  facts  of  value,  from  the  ethical  point  of 
view. 

The  second  distinction  which  is  required  in  order  the  better 
to  define  the  sphere  of  ethics  is  the  distinction  between  action 


272  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  conduct.^  "  It  is  not  mere  doing,  whether  of  this  or  tliat 
sort,  which  gives  to  the  student  of  ethics  his  peculiar  problems. 
Conduct  implies  something  more  than  action.  Conduct  implies 
the  consciousness  of  an  end  that  may  be  striven  for;  it  implies 
the  knowledge  of  means  that  are  adapted  to  the  end ;  it  implies 
the  power  of  choice  with  reference  to  both  end  and  means. 
Conduct,  in  a  word,  is  action  rationally  shaped;  it  is  the  doing 
of  a  Moral  Self."  This,  however,  does  not  narrow  the  sphere 
of  ethics.  We  recall  how  Aristotle,  in  his  attempt  to  define 
ethics  as  a  kind  of  politics,  affirms  of  the  total  function  of  man 
that  it  is  "  an  activity  of  soul  in  accordance  with  reason,  or  not 
independently  of  reason"  (Nic.  Eth,,  I,  vii,  14).  Conduct,  as 
being  the  action  of  a  Moral  Self,  is  not  indeed  a  specific  kind 
of  action,  set  apart,  as  it  were,  for  some  definite  species  of 
external  performances,  certain  compliances  with  custom,  or  re- 
fusals to  comply,  to  the  exclusion  of  other  species  of  action. 
"  In  fact,  the  presence  of  these  ethical  estimates  is  to  be  dis- 
cerned in  every  thing  which  man  consciously  and  voluntarily 
does.  Higher  or  lower  degrees  of  these  characteristics  of  all 
conduct  are  actually  found  as  far  back  in  history,  and  as  low 
down  in  ethical  or  intellectual  degradation,  as  we  can  follow 
the  development  of  humanity.  In  his  eating  the  adult  human 
being,  unless  converted  by  hunger,  or  lost  to  shame,  he  returns 
to  the  action  of  a  beast,  does  not  merely  feed.  In  his  drinking 
he  does  not  simply  swill  his  drink.  He  raises  the  social  cup, 
he  pours  out  a  libation  to  the  gods;  and  the  gods  at  any  rate 
must  be  treated  politely  by  the  most  shameless  and  glutton- 
ous of  cannibals.  And  when,  as  amongst  the  various  Hindu 
castes  in  India,  custom  and  morality  and  religion  are  so  con- 
fused as  to  constitute  a  nearly  complete  enslavement  of  all  the 
activities  and  interests  of  human  life,  the  necessity  and  validity 
of  this  distinction  between  action  and  conduct  are  all  the 
more  to  be  emphasized." 

1  See  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  p.  10  f.,  from  which 
the  following  quotations  are  talien. 


ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  273 

From  these  considerations  are  derived  in  part,  but  in  part 
only,  the  reasons  for  emphasizing  the  presence  of  ideals  in  all 
ethical  study.  Certain  proximate,  but  not  final,  ideals  are  of 
necessity  involved  in  the  very  facts  which  have  been  called 
"estimates  of  the  values  of  facts";  and  which  therefore  comply 
with  the  characteristics  distinguishing  mere  action  from  true 
conduct.  In  one  form  or  another  most  writers  on  ethical  sub- 
jects acknowledge  the  presence  and  power  of  these  ideal  influ- 
ences. It  is  this  recognition  which  has  led  some  of  them 
(Wundt)  to  define  ethics  as  "the  original  science  of  norms"; 
and  which  has  induced  yet  others  (]\Ir.  Spencer)  to  speak  of 
ethics  as  dealing  with  the  "  doubly  ideal."  By  the  latter  term 
it  is  meant  that  ethics  should  consider  what  would  be  "  ideal 
conduct"  (or  conduct  conforming  to  the  idea  which  sets  the 
standard)  under  "  ideally  constituted  social  conditions."  But 
with  this  we  cannot  agree. 

If  now  the  data  of  ethics  be  approached  with  a  view  to  collate 
and  interpret  them,  and  so  to  rediice  them  to  something,  at  least 
resembling  scientific  form,  the  approach  may  be  made  from 
any  one  of  several  points  of  view.  Inasmuch  as  these 
data  are  facts  of  dilferent  kinds  of  human  conduct,  rather 
than  of  the  actions  of  the  lower  animals  or  of  an- 
gelic beings  under  other  than  human  physical  and  social  con- 
ditions, they  must  be  regarded  as  springing  from  the  nature  of 
man.  The  sources  of  ethics  are  to  be  found  in  the  Self,  re- 
garded as  self-conscious  and  self-determining;  but  also  as  in- 
fluenced and  determined  by  its  relations  to  other  selves  and  to 
self-like  things.  When  studied  from  this  point  of  view,  ethics 
becomes  a  pre-eminently  psychological  investigation.  But  the 
same  data  may  be  classified  as  historical  occurrences;  and  then 
it  soon  becomes  apparent  that  this  classification,  in  order  to 
correspond  to  historical  truth,  must  recognize  the  principle  of 
development.  By  no  means  precisely  the  same  kinds  of  eon- 
duct  have  been  estimated  in  the  same  way  by  all  human  beings 
at  any  one  time,  or  under  all  conditions,  or  in  the  dillerent 


2T4  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ages  of  human  history.  Whether  the  ethical  data  are  studied, 
as  they  are  furnished  by  the  individual,  or  by  any  particular 
group  of  individuals,  or— so  far  as  this  is  possible — by  the 
race  at  large,  ceaseless  changes  are  seen  to  be  taking  place. 
Some  deeds  which  were  rated  as  virtues  become  rated  as  vices; 
and  the  vices  of  previous  generations  gain  toleration,  or  even 
secure  the  approval  as  virtues,  of  succeeding  generations.  A 
deeper  insight  does,  indeed,  convince  the  student  that  these 
changes  affect  more  the  external  signs  than  the  character  of  the 
motives,  the  sentiments  and  ideals,  from  which  the  actions  are 
judged  to  spring.  But  this  conclusion,  too,  must  be  reached  in 
accordance  with  the  verdict  of  history. 

In  man's  moral  development,  Avhether  as  individual  or  as 
racial,  the  same  general  truths  prevail  which  characterize  every 
form  of  human  development.  It  is  only  by  observation  and  re- 
flection that  the  j\Ioral  Self  comes  to  understand  itself  as  moral 
or  to  discover  the  principles  which  underlie  and  regulate  the 
relations  in  the  midst  of  which  its  life  and  its  developments 
take  place.  Eight  moral  practice,  understood  as  an  intelligent 
and  deliberate  conformity  to  principles  which  appear  reasonable 
to  the  conscious  mind,  is  a  relatively  late  affair.  The  more 
nearly  instinctive  and  spontaneous  following  of  obscure  im- 
pulses, the  acceptance  of  judgments  either  pronounced  by  recog- 
nized authorities  or  embodied  in  customs  and  institutions,  belong 
to  the  earlier  stages  of  ethical  development.  Beyond  these 
stages,  even  after  centuries  of  discussion  of  ethical  problems 
by  the  advocates  of  the  different  schools  of  ethics,  multitudes  of 
men  never  attain.  But  in  ethics,  as  in  physics  and  in  the 
natural  sciences  generally,  certain  principles  do  become,  not 
only  more  clear  as  embodied  in  customs  and  institutions,  and 
as  taught  by  the  recognized  authorities;  but  they  become  more 
clearly  comprehended  as  respects  their  nature  and  their  grounds. 
Thus  something  of  a  logical  character,  something  resembling  a 
scientific  system,  is  in  a  measure  made  possible  for  the  student 
of  ethics.     In  a  word,  the  psychological  study  of  the  data  in 


ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  275 

their  sources,  and  the  historical  study  of  the  same  data  in  their 
evohition,  helped  out  by  reasoning,  result  in  a  so-called  "  sci- 
ence of  ethics." 

Whether  we  consent  to  call  this  result  from  studying  the 
facts  of  human  conduct  a  "  science,"  or  not,  we  certainly  can- 
not call  it  a  science  of  ethics,  the  moment  we  lose  sight  of  those 
distinctions  in  the  making  of  which  the  peculiar  sphere  of  the 
moral,  as  contrasted  with  the  non-moral,  is  to  be  defined.  The 
data  of  ethics  are  never  less  than  the  doings  of  a  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  mind.  It  is  true  that  all  condi\pt,  like  all 
the  existence  of  man  and  all  that  happens  to  man,  is  insep- 
arably related  to  the  bodily  organism,  both  in  the  manner  of 
its  origin  and  also  in  the  character  of  its  expression.  Of  what 
would  be  conduct,  good  or  bad,  for  a  wholly  disembodied  spirit, 
no  satisfactory  mental  representation  can  be  framed.  It  is  also 
true  that  the  earlier  and  vaguer  notions  of  personal  life  at- 
tribute to  the  Self  many  things  which  do  not  fall  under  the 
category  of  conduct  as  we  have  already  defined  it.  Primitive 
and  savage  peoples  often  emphasize  by  punishment  or  reward 
a  kind  of  unconscious  and  unintentional  tribal  responsibility. 
And  theology  has,  in  all  the  greater  religions,  consigned  un- 
born or  newly  born  infants,  to  perdition  for  the  conscious 
vices  of  remote  and  even  mythical  ancestors.  But  if  any  ap- 
propriate sphere  for  a  scientific  ethics  is  to  be  discovered,  it 
must  recognize  the  difference  between  action  and  conduct  as 
already  defined. 

Whether  in  treating  of  the  sources,  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
or  the  logical  conclusions  by  way  of  establishing  principles  of 
ethics,  another  distinction  is  equally  important.  This  dis- 
tinction arises  out  of  a  difference  in  the  "  facts  of  estimate  " 
given  to  the  facts  of  conduct.  If  there  were  no  such  facts  of 
estimate,  and  no  such  classification  as  is  signified  by  the  words 
"  approved  "  or  "  disapproved,"  "  right "  or  "  wrong,"  "  good  " 
or  "bad,"  "ought"  and  "ought-not";  then  there  would  be  no 
strictly  ethical  data  to  consider.     Indeed,  it  is  the  attachment 


276  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  the  facts  of  estimate  to  the  facts  of  conduct  which  converts 
them  into  affairs  of  moral  concernment.  This  second  distinc- 
tion directs  the  thought  to  a  doctrine  of  sanctions  as  an  indis- 
pensable part  of  moral  philosophy. 

This  preliminary  conception  of  the  sphere  of  ethics  may  be 
completed  by  summarizing  the  preceding  thoughts  as  follows: 
"  Ethics  results  from  the  scientific  study  of  human  conduct — 
its  sources,  its  development,  its  most  general  principles  and  its 
sanctions — as  related  to  a  standard."  Its  subject-matter  is 
Conduct;  its  problems  are  such  as  the  following:  How  do  the 
different  facts  of  estimate  arise  as  having  their  sources  in  hu- 
man nature?  What  kind  of  development  do  these  forms  of 
conduct  go  through,  in  the  history  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
race?  What  principles  may,  with  more  or  less  consistency,  be 
derived  as  governing  this  development?  What  is  the  origin, 
nature,  and  validity  of  these  sanctions?  And  what  is  the 
nature  of  the  standard  to  which  the  different  kinds  of  con- 
duct are  brought,  for  the  purpose  of  determining  their 
worth  ? 

It  will  appear  at  once  that  it  is  no  easy  task  to  tell  just 
where  philosophy  must  enter  the  field,  and  how  far  go  hand  in 
hand  with  science,  in  the  discussion  of  ethical  data.  There  is, 
indeed,  no  important  ethical  problem  which  does  not  very 
quickly  transform  itself  into  such  a  shape  that  its  solution  be- 
comes largely  a  matter  for  metaphysical  inquiry.  Indeed,  when 
examined  to  their  foundations,  they  are  all  found  to  be  firmly 
cemented  to  metaphysical  problems.  The  one  profoundly  in- 
teresting question  which  reflective  thinking  puts  to  them  all  is 
with  regard  to  their  grounds  in  the  real  Being  of  the  World. 
Facts,  they  are,  and  opinions  about  facts.  They  are  facts 
which  at  first  seem  of  the  most  mystical  and  changeful  char- 
acter; they  are  opinions  that  often  appear  most  whimsical  to 
the  mind  of  a  later  age,  and  often  most  unaccountable  even  to 
the  mind  of  the  person  entertaining  theiii.  Yet  there  is  about 
these  ethical  data  a  certain  group  of  characteristics  which  led 


ETHICS,  OR  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  277 

the  Creek  tragedian  to  speak  of  the  "  firmer  laws  "  of  right 
and  wrong  conduct  as, 

"  Created  not  of  man's  ephemeral  mould, 
They  ne'er  shall  sink  to  slumber  in  oblivion, 
A  power  of  God  is  there,  untouched  by  Time." 

And  Aristotle,  although  he  seems  clearly  to  have  recognized 
the  difficulty  of  establishing  ethics  as  a  science,  affirms :  "  There 
is  no  human  function  so  constant  as  the  activities  in  accordance 
with  virtue;  they  seem  to  be  more  permanent  than  the  sciences 
themselves." 

The  following  three  questions,  however,  summarize  fairly 
well  the  main  problems  which  the  data  of  ethics  propose  to 
reflective  thinking  in  the  form  of  moral  philosophy:  (1)  What 
is  the  real  nature  of  that  being  in  whom  the  sources  of  mor- 
ality are  found?  (2)  What  are  the  kinds  of  his  conduct  that 
have  actually  established  themselves  as  conformable  to  the 
standard  set  by  this  nature  in  its  actual  relations  to  its  environ- 
ment? (3)  What  ground  in  the  Being  of  the  World  can  be 
assumed  for  the  sanctions  and  the  ideals  of  morality?  In 
brief,  the  philosophy  of  conduct  treats  of  the  Moral  Self,  the 
Virtuous  Life,  and  the  Nature  of  the  Eight  or  morally  Good; 
— and  all  with  a  view  to  fit  its  conclusions  into  a  harmonious 
system  of  reflective  thinking. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  MORAL  SELF 

The  principal  problem  of  psychological  ethics  may  be 
summed  up  in  some  such  manner  as  follows :  What  equipment 
for  the  moral  life  belongs  to  the  subject  of  that  life?  In  at- 
tempting to  answer  this  problem  that  study  of  the  phenomena 
which  takes  the  point  of  view  of  biological  evolution  and  there- 
fore tries,  under  the  principle  of  continuity,  to  make  both  a 
historical  and  a  causal  connection  between  man  and  the  lower 
animals,  is  not  without  great  value.  But  from  the  distinctively 
ethical  point  of  view,  man's  moral  nature  must  be  regarded  as 
an  endowment.  Whatever  order  his  moral  evolution  may  have 
followed;  and  however  the  influences  of  environment  acted  in 
establishing  this  order;  ethics  is  chiefly  concerned  to  know  that 
it  is,  and  what  it  is,  which  now  renders  man  capable  of  respon- 
sible conduct.  Even  in  raising  such  an  inquiry,  it  is  found 
necessary  to  distinguish  between  those  factors,  or  forms  of 
functioning,  which  are  essentially  ethical,  and  those  which, 
however  important  as  springs  and  guides  of  conduct,  are  not 
essential  in  order  to  a  capacity  for  conduct  at  all.  For  exam- 
ple, anger,  jealousy,  fear,  pride,  and  sympathy,  together  with 
the  actions  which  grow  out  of  them,  are  common  to  man  with 
the  lower  animals.  In  man's  case  these  emotions  become  dis- 
tinguished as  either  good  or  bad  from  the  ethical  point  of  view. 
In  man's  case,  too,  they  have  an  important  influence  in  deter- 
mining moral  character.  But  they  are  not  in  themselves  spe- 
cific factors  of  man's  moral  equipment;  they  need  to  be  associ- 
ated with  some  other  characteristics  of  feeling,  judgment,  and 
volition,  in  order  to  give  them  the  uniquely  moral  significance 
which  they  have  in  the  case  of  the  human  animal. 

What,  then,  is  it  really  to  be  a  Moral  Self  ?    And  what  is  the 

278 


THE  MORAL  SELF  279 

significance  of  such  a  being  in  its  influence  upon  our  views 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  world  which  has  evolved  him?  If  we 
can  answer  tliese  questions  witli  any  degree  of  fullness  and  con- 
fidence, we  may  hope — at  least  in  some  measure — to  expand 
and  confirm  a  tenable  theory  of  reality.  Thus  the  metaphysics 
of  ethics  may  be  made  contributory  to  general  metaphysics. 
Really  to  be  a  Self  is,  indeed,  to  be  a  self-conscious,  rational, 
and  self-determining  Mind.  But  to  be  such  a  mind,  would  not, 
of  itself,  be  the  equivalent  of  a  real  Moral  Selfhood.  What 
more  is  necessary  in  order  to  constitute  such  a  reality  ?  Nature 
has  answered  this  most  primary  demand  by  endowing  man  with 
a  unique  form   of  feeling.^ 

"  Into  every  genuinely  human  consciousness,  into  every  sub- 
ject of  the  truly  human  life,  there  enters  at  some  time  a  form 
of  emotional  disturbance  which  is  chronologically  primary  and 
essential  to  the  very  idea  of  ethics,  as  well  as  the  unique  pos- 
session of  man.  It  is  only  when  this  feeling  becomes  attached 
to  the  idea  of  a  certain  action,  that  the  action  becomes  conduct 
and  the  truly  moral  life  begins.  This  statement  must  be  re- 
ceived as  applying  in  the  strictest  way  to  the  development  of 
moral  consciousness  in  the  individual;  but  it  may  be  taken  on 
grounds  which,  although  largely  speculative,  are  quite  tenable, 
as  applying  to  the  development  of  morality  in  the  race.  It 
follows  from  the  very  nature  of  this  feeling,  as  well  as  from 
the  circumstances  of  its  first  origin  in  human  consciousness, 
that  all  analysis  ends  with  its  recognition;  neither  the  memory 
of  the  individual,  nor  any  records  kept  by  mankind,  can  recall 
and  represent  the  occasions  or  the  conditions  of  its  origin  in 
the  race.  As  in  similar  cases,  however,  it  is  possible  in  this  case 
to  place  on  a  firm  basis  of  observed  facts  our  views  as  to  what 
takes  place  in  the  development  of  the  individual,  and  to  make 
out  an  acceptable  argument  as  to  what  must  have  taken  place 

1  For  a  detailed  discussion  of  the  "  Feeling  of  Obligation,"  see 
Chapter  V  of  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  from  which  the 
quotations  are  made. 


280  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

in  the  history  of  the  race."  This  feeling,  which  in  its  compli- 
cated and  more  highly  developed  form  is  known  as  the  "  feeling 
of  obligation,"  we  will  call  in  its  simpler  and  original  form  the 
"feeling  of  the  ouglii"  (and  its  opposite,  the  feeling  of  the 
ought-not).  About  it  our  contention  is  this:  "The  feeling  of 
the  ought"  is  primary,  essential,  unique;  hut  the  judgments  as 
to  what  one  ought  are  the  result  of  environment,  education,  and 
reflection. 

\Yithin  the  consciousness  of  the  human  individual  this  feel- 
ing of  the  ought  must  arise  and  develope,  or  there  can  be  no 
beginning  and  no  growth  of  the  Moral  Self.  The  actuality  in 
fact,  and  the  dominating  influence  of  this  feeling,  constitute 
the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind  to  be  an  ethical 
spirit.  Its  nature,  which  is  essential  to  human  moral  nature, 
demands  such  a  description  as  experience  is  able  to  give  to  it; 
but  its  nature  is  essentially  such  as  to  make  its  positive  charac- 
teristics known  only  by  the  experience  of  just  it  and  no  other 
form  of  emotion  or  ideation.  And,  first,  the  feeling  of  the 
ought  is  not  a  mere  pleasure-pain  feeling;  although  it  may  be 
fused,  or  more  loosely  associated,  with  various  kinds  of  pleasur- 
able or  painful  feelings.  Second :  it  is  not  a  special  form  of 
emotion  or  desire,  to  be  classed  with  the  appetites,  passions, 
or  affections,  such  as  hunger,  or  anger,  fear,  jealousy,  love,  or 
hate.  But  it  is,  third,  a  social  feeling  and  apparently  demands 
for  its  origin  even,  as  it  certainly  demands  for  its  guidance  and 
development,  the  encitement  of  personal  instruction  and  the 
experience  of  personal  relations.  It  is  also,  fourth,  a  peculiar 
form  of  compulsion.  To  feel  "  T  ought "  is  to  liecome  aware 
of  some  sort  of  bond  which  draws  toward,  or  away  from,  some 
particular  deed  or  course  of  conduct.  But  it  would  appear  that 
in  most,  if  not  in  all,  of  its  earlier  forms  of  manifestation,  the 
reason  Why — the  explanation  of  the  cause  of  tlie  compulsion — 
is  not  made  clear  to  the  subject  of  this  feeling.  It  is  this  mys- 
tery about  the  wliole  matter,  this  failure  to  comprehend  why  the 
mind  feels  compelled  to  do  or  not  to  do,  with  its  accompani- 


THE  MORAL  SELF  281 

ment  of  sanctions  which  are  obscure  and  hard  to  reckon  witli, 
tliat  has  bestowed  its  power  upon  tabu  among  primitive  and 
savage  peoples;  and  that  has  also  induced  religious  minds  to 
regard  conscience  as  the  "  voice  of  God."  To  this  must  be 
added  that  the  more  sensitive  the  mind  becomes  to  this  kind  of 
compulsion,  the  less  regardful  it  becomes  of  the  other  forms 
of  physical  or  psychical  compulsion  which  endeavor  to  control 
conduct  by  an  appeal  to  its  sensitiveness  to  various  kinds  of 
pleasures  and  pains. 

It  is  true  that  "  when  adult  men  say,  '  I  ought,'  or  other 
words  equivalent  to  these,  they  are  customarily  expressing  a 
complex  attitude  of  mind  toward  a  particular  piece  of  conduct. 
Like  every  other  attitude  of  mind,  tliat  which  is  tlius  expressed 
involves  feeling,  thought,  and  volition.  And,  indeed,  one  may 
emphasize  either  of  these  three  aspects  of  the  total  situation  by 
modifying  one's  expression.  Thus  one  may  emphasize  the  emo- 
tional factor  by  declaring:  'I  feel'  (more  or  less  intensely  and 
unswervingly)  that  I  ought;  or  may  lay  stress  upon  the  intel- 
lectual factor,  the  presence  of  judgment,  by  saying :  '  I  think  ' 
(more  or  less  clearly,  and  with  a  consciousness  of  the  reasons 
or  grounds)  that  I  ought;  or  even:  'I  must,'  indeed,  and  I 
shall,  because  I  ought — in  this  way  bringing  into  evidence  the 
volitional  impulse  or  mandate  given  to  the  will.  But  by  sep- 
arating in  thought,  what  cannot  be  found  wholly  apart  in  the 
actual  life  of  the  Self,  the  conclusion  is  justified  that  this  feel- 
ing of  the  ought  is  not  to  be  identified  with  any  other  forms  of 
human  consciousness," 

It  is  not  difficult  now  to  sec  how  a  great  variety  arises,  not 
only  in  the  actual  forms  of  conduct  which  become  accepted  as 
customs,  but  also  in  those  facts  of  estimate  which  by  their  at- 
tachment to  the  facts  of  action  ])ring  them  within  the  sphere 
of  the  truly  moral.  For  this  obscure  and  mysterious  "  feeling 
of  oughtness  "  is  at  first  chiefly  subject  to  conditions  set  by  the 
physical  and  social  environment.  More  precisely,  at  the  first, 
it  is  chiefly  prohibitory, — an  enforcement  by  authority  or  by 


282  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  immediate  connection  with  painful  consequences,  of  the 
feeling  I  ovight-not.  Especially  amongst  savage  and  more 
nearly  primitive  peoples  is  it  true  that  the  feeling  of  ohligation 
is  primarily  enforced,  in  the  supposed  interests  of  the  family 
or  tribe,  so  as  to  connect  itself  with  refraining  from  doing 
something  which  the  passions  or  self-interested  promptings  of 
the  individual  would  lead  him  to  do.  "You  must  not  this; 
you  must  not  that/' — such  is  the  command  with  which  the  com- 
munity meets  the  cry  of  its  individual  members :  "  I  want  this, 
or  I  want  that."  Almost  equally  original  and  imperative  is  the 
demand  to  do  that  which  it  is  painful  or  disagreeable  to  do. 
Thus  customs,  whether  they  are  viewed  as  good  or  bad  morally 
from  the  later  historical,  or  higher  and  purer  ethical  points  of 
view,  become  the  approved  laws  for  the  Moral  Self.  That  en- 
vironment— and  chiefly  in  the  social  form  constituted  by 
the  prevalent  customs — largely  has  the  say  as  to  what  connec- 
tions shall  in  fact  be  established  between  certain  forms  and 
types  of  conduct  and  this  unique  feeling  of  obligation,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  saying 
that  the  customary  is  the  moral;  or  that  the  development  of  the 
Moral  Self  is  purely  a  matter  determined  by  the  physical  and 
social  environment. 

Moreover,  a  process  of  reflection  which  has  for  its  object  to 
consider  both  the  remoter  consequences  of  conduct,  and  also 
the  intrinsic  nature  of  the  inner  life  of  thought,  sentiment, 
and  deeds  of  will,  as  itself  subject  to  estimates  of  value  from 
an  ideal  point  of  view,  is  all  the  while  going  on  in  the  individual 
and  in  the  race.  ]\Ioral  judgment,  carrying  with  it  the  com- 
pulsion of  the  feeling  of  obligation,  is  constantly  being  passed 
upon  the  established  customs  themselves.  Thus  the  IMoral 
Self  rises  above  the  very  influences  which  have  co-operated  to 
make  it  a  ]\[oral  Self  at  the  first.  It  was  shaped  by  custom; 
but  it  now  "  breaks  the  cake  of  custom  "  and  appeals  in  justi- 
fication to  something  of  a  higher  value  which  it  finds  within 
itself. 


THE  MORAL  SELF  283 

"The  further  exposition  of  the  part  which  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation plays  in  the  moral  development  of  man  requires  that  the 
working  of  other  faculties  in  his  equipment  for  the  life  of  con- 
duct should  be  taken  into  account.  In  part  tl.e  origin,  nature, 
and  cultivation  of  ethical  judgments  must  be  discussed  before 
we  can  understand  the  later  forms  of  his  consciousness  of 
'  oughtness.'  But  two  or  three  classes  of  familiar  phenomena 
deserve  at  least  a  reference  in  this  connection.  First,  it  may 
readily  be  seen  that  vacillations  and  uncertainties  of  this  form 
of  ethical  feeling  are  inevitable.  These  are  not  simply  due  to 
its  obscuration  and  blunting  by  the  so-called  selfish  emotions. 
Doubt  about  the  rightfulness  of  the  control  of  tlie  feeling  of  ob- 
ligation by  the  current  rules  of  conduct  is  essential  to  a  higher 
development  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  But  such  douljt 
inevitably  leads  to  the  disturbance  of  the  feeling  and  to  its 
possible  detachment  from  its  old  associations.  While  this  feel- 
ing trembles  in  the  balance,  as  it  were,  between  the  old  and  the 
new  point  of  attachment,  an  important  influence  is  being  ex- 
ercised upon  the  entire  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  the 
conception  of  duty  and  toward  the  dutiful  life.  In  large  com- 
munities, and  over  continents  occupied  by  different  races  and 
differing  constitutions  of  existing  society,  periods  of  'illumina- 
tion '  are  always  connected  with  unusual  disturbances  in  morals 
and  in  the  moral  consciousness.  This  was  true  of  the  epoch 
when  the  Sophists  became  prominent  in  Greece,  of  the  Renais- 
sance in  the  Middle  Ages,  of  the  AufHdrung  in  Europe  in  the 
eighteenth  century;  it  is  true  of  to-day  in  connection  with  the 
modern  discoveries  of  ethnology  and  with  the  application  of  the 
cruder  views  of  biological  evolution  to  the  development  of  mor- 
ality in  the  human  race. 

"  And,  second,  the  place  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  in  the 
moral  life  explains,  in  part,  how  divergent  views  as  to  the 
nature  and  authority  of  so-called  '  conscience '  may  arise.  To 
speak  of  a  conscience,  or  tlid  conscience,  is  likely  to  induce 
misunderstanding  of  the  most  primary  data  of  psychological 


284  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ethics.  Moral  consciousness  man  has;  or,  rather,  he  is  essen- 
tially a  moral  consciousness.  In  this  moral  nature  of  his  con- 
sciousness are  found  involved  all  of  his  so-called  faculties,  or 
powers,  in  so  far  as  they  have  reference  to  tlie  production  and 
the  criticism  of  conduct.  No  wonder,  then,  that  those  theorists 
who  appeal  solely  to  the  feeling  of  obligation  fail  to  convince 
others  who  take  their  appeal  to  the  bar  of  an  enlightened  judg- 
ment. And  just  as  little  wonder  that  the  latter,  when  they 
offend  the  feeling  of  obligation  by  their  coolly  intellectual  judg- 
ments, run  the  risk  of  being  described  as  essentially  immoral  in 
their  standards  of  judgment.  Thus  fine  feeling  and  sound 
judgment  in  matters  of  conduct  may  seem  to  be  involved  in  a 
perpetual  conflict. 

"But,  third,  these  same  considerations  show  that  this  kind  of 
conflicts  in  morals,  with  all  the  tragedy  to  which  these  words 
indubitably  bear  witness,  is  the  fate  of  the  individual  and  of 
the  race, — the  price  that  must  be  paid  for  all  essential  progress 
under  existing  social  conditions  toward  the  realization  of  the 
moral  ideal.  If  moral  judgment,  based  on  grounds  that  lie 
outside  itself  and  beyond  the  reach  of  mere  feeling,  is  ever  to 
be  framed,  then  feeling  and  judgment  must  at  times  come  into 
conflict.  But  since  the  rational  man  feels  the  obligation  to  be 
rational, — and,  sometimes,  as  his  supremest  obligation, — there- 
fore, the  feeling  of  obligation  is  liable  to  be  divided  against 
itself.  He  who  has  not  judged  that  he  ought  not  to  do  that 
which  he,  nevertheless,  still  feels  that  he  ought  to  do,  has  prob- 
ably not  yet  passed  beyond  the  earliest  stages  of  moral  develop- 
ment. 

"  And,  finally,  we  are  now  prepared  in  a  general  way  to  give 
an  opinion  upon  one  of  the  contentions  of  the  extreme  evolu- 
tionary school  of  ethics.  This  school  would  make  out  that  all 
which  concerns  the  feeling  of  obligation  is  relative,  is  subject 
to  evolution.  In  the  case  of  individual  man  such  a  conclusion 
plainly  is  not  true  to  the  facts  in  the  case.  With  the  individual 
the  most  primary  movings  of  an  *  ought-consciousness '  are  not 


THE  MORAL  SELF  285 

niodificatioiis  of  tlio  plcasiirc-pain  feelings,  or  of  any  of  those 
forms  of  emotional  excitement  which  are  so  often  improperly 
divided  into  egoistic  and  altruistic.  On  tlie  other  hand,  the 
most  primary  forms  of  the  quasi-etliical  jiidgnients  are  only 
propositions  stating  the  fact  of  the  arouscment  of  this  feeling; 
and  the  particular  actions  to  which  this  feeling  makes  its  earli- 
est and  firmest  attachments  are  explicahic  hy  reference  to  influ- 
ences of  education  and  environment.  In  the  later  development 
of  the  ]\loral  Self,  the  feeling  of  ohligation  becomes  modified 
and  changed  in  its  associations  by  the  changed  character  of  the 
same  influences,  as  these  influences  work  upon  all  the  passions 
and  aflVctions,  and  upon  a  system  of  increasingly  intelligent 
judgments. 

"  Thus  do  man's  moral  convictions  form  themselves;  and  they 
always  present  the  twofold  aspect  in  which  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation stands  to  liis  voluntary  nature.  They  have  a  passive 
aspect;  they  are  a  consciousness  of  being  under  law.  They  have 
also  an  active  aspect;  they  are  an  emotional  excitement  which 
constitutes  a  call  to  volition.  The  feeling  of  obligation  is  a 
feeling  of  being  bound;  for  the  'ought'  partakes  in  a  measure 
of  the  nature  of  a  '  must':  it  is  also  an  impulsive  feeling,  and 
in  its  more  intense  forms  comes  very  near  to  passing  over  from 
emotional  impulse  into  an  '  I  will.' 

"  What  is  true  in  the  small  sphere  is  probably  true  in  the 
large.  What  is  true  of  tlie  ought-consciousness  of  tlie  individual 
is,  so  far  as  we  can  discover,  true  of  the  place  whicli  the  feeling 
of  obligation  has  always  taken  in  the  development  of  the  moral 
life  of  the  race." 

No  increase  in  the  intensity,  or  refinement  in  the  quality, 
of  the  feeling  of  obligation  could  ever  result  in  the  development 
of  a  Moral  Self.  Here,  as  in  all  the  functions  and  interests  of 
a  completed  self-hood,  or  maturing  personality,  it  is  the  active 
intellect  which  developes.  For  this,  its  work  in  the  sphere  of 
the  moral  life,  however,  it  does  not  appear  that  any  additional 
or  peculiar  forms  of  intellectual  activity  are  necessary.    What 


286  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

is  necessary  lies  outside  of  the  individual.  It  is  his  social  en- 
vironment, and  the  instructive  and  disciplinary  experiences 
which  necessarily  arise  out  of  the  varied  relations  and  causal 
reactions  which  come  to  the  individual  by  way  of  intercourse 
with  those  of  his  own  kind.  In  a  word,  given  a  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  mind,  with  all  the  powers  of  memory, 
imagination,  and  rational  inference  as  to  the  secret  and  more 
remote  consequences  of  actions;  endow  such  a  mind  with  the 
feeling  of  obligation;  and  place  it  under  such  social  conditions 
as  actually  exist  for  the  race  in  its  historical  development  here 
upon  the  earth;  and  you  then  have  supplied  all  that  is  necessary 
for  the  maturing  of  a  Moral  Self. 

The  earliest  judgments,  which  have  only  an  inchoate  or  qvasi- 
ethical  character,  are  easily  accounted  for  in  the  following  way : 
Under  external  influences,  the  most  potent  of  which  consists 
of  the  immediate  and  dominant  personal  authority,  the  feeling 
of  oughtness  becomes  attached  to  certain  kinds  of  action,  as  a 
form  of  either  positive  or  negative  compulsion — a  feeling  of 
the  "  ought-to-be-done,"  or  of  the  "  ought-not-to-be-done."  This 
feeling  is  aroused,  intensified,  and  reinforced  by  certain  pains  or 
pleasures,  which  are  inflicted  by  the  same  external  authority. 
The  parent,  the  nurse,  the  older  brother  or  sister,  the  com- 
munity of  playmates,  or  of  teacher  and  school-mates,  or  the 
officer  of  the  law  in  the  block  or  upon  the  street-corner,  estab- 
lishes for  the  individual  child  the  connection  in  experience  be- 
tween the  germ  of  ethical  emotion  and  the  deed  of  will  which 
results  in  the  action.  In  its  first  stage,  then,  moral  judgment 
is  little  or  nothing  more  than  an  affirmation  of  this  connection. 
This  is  right,  and  that  is  wrong,  means  only  that  the  feeling  of 
oughtness  in  the  one  case,  and  of  its  opposite  in  the  other  case, 
is  in  fact  established  by  certain  social,  but  purely  external  in- 
fluences. But  this  important  distinction  between  the  moral 
judgment,  even  when  in  its  most  undeveloped  form,  and  all 
judgments  having  relation  to  the  connection  of  external  events, 
is  to  be  noted :  The  moral  judgment  establishes  a  connection  of 


THE  MORAL  SELF  287 

an  interior  and  unique  sort  between  my  feeling  and  my  deed 
of  will.  And  when  this  connection  is  reinforced  by  those  other 
more  complicated  and  distinctly  social  forms  of  ethical  feeling 
which  will  be  described  later  on,  the  evolution  of  moral  self- 
hood  is  already  well  begun. 

Tlic  undeveloped  state  of  the  moral  judgment  cannot  last, 
no  matter  however  secluded  the  individual  may  be,  or  how 
narrow  the  limits  of  his  social  environment.  Doubt  must  arise 
as  to  the  validity  and  the  value  of  such  judgment;  and  read 
justment  of  the  factors  which  enter  into  it,  whether  it  has 
taken  the  affirmative  or  the  negative  form,  must  inevitably  take 
place.  No  individual  is  so  fortunately  born  and  so  carefully  edu- 
cated as  to  escape  this  shaking-up  of  his  naive  and  unintelligent, 
but  feeling-full  moral  judgments.  No  child  of  the  slums,  how- 
ever trained  to  judge  himself  bound  in  honor  to  commit  crimes 
against  the  larger  social  order  which  encompasses  and  tries 
to  restrain  his  own,  can  wholly  avoid  the  challenge  to  reconsider 
his  ideas  and  ideals  of  an  ethical  sort. 

The  sources  of  this  compulsion  to  form  new  and  different 
judgments  as  to  conduct  are  chiefly  of  two  kinds.  One  kind 
arises  from  within.  The  very  individuality  of  every  Self  brings 
about  a  conflict  between  the  judgments  which  have  been  dic- 
tated from  without  in  conformity  to  the  social  customs  and 
social  ideals,  and  the  judgments  which  are  required  in  order 
to  afford  satisfaction  to  the  individual  Self.  I  have  been 
told,  I  have  been  made  to  feel,  that  I  ought  to  do  this,  and  that 
I  ought  not  to  do  that.  But  I  have  my  own  Self  to  look  after; 
and  as  this  Self  developes,  the  demands  which  it  makes  for  vari- 
ous kinds  and  amounts  of  satisfactions  are  greatly  increased.  I 
want  to  do  what  I  have  been  made  to  feel  I  ought  not  to  do; 
and  I  want  not  to  do  what  I  have  been  made  to  feel  I  ought 
to  do.  According  as  these  impulses  to  action,  by  way  of  appe- 
tite, passion,  desire,  ambition,  aspiration,  when  judged  by  the 
standard  of  an  enlightened  moral  ideal,  are  either  lower  or 
higher  than  the  forms  of  conduct  prescribed  and  enforced  by  the 


288  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

custom  prevailing  in  his  class,  the  individual  may  be  deter- 
mined to  fall  or  to  rise  in  the  moral  scale.  In  the  one  case  he 
violates  conscience,  as  mere  unreasoned  feeling,  by  determin- 
ing to  act  contrary  to  his  former  moral  judgments;  and  he 
may  easily  end  by  altering  or  suppressing  the  feeling,  and  by 
judging  it  to  be  morally  right  for  him  so  to  act.  In  the  other 
case,  he  finds  the  satisfaction  for  what  seems  to  him  a  higher 
form  of  feeling,  by  changing  his  former  judgments  in  favor  of 
these  newer  forms  of  experience.  In  either  case,  there  has 
been  an  important  development  of  the  Moral  Self.  As  we  hear  it 
properly  said :  "  The  man  has  come  to  judge  and  to  act  more 
for  himself." 

This  inner  temptation,  or  solicitation,  to  the  development  of 
moral  selfhood  by  forming  moral  judgments  of  a  more  re- 
flective and  self-determined  character,  is  further  enforced  by  a 
growing  experience  with  the  social  environment.  It  does  not 
take  the  child  long  to  discover  that  other  people  hold  a  great 
variety  of  views  as  to  the  right  and  the  wrong  of  particular 
kinds  of  conduct.  Of  course,  in  certain  essentials  there  seems 
to  be  too  nearly  general  an  agreement  to  make  it  worth  while  to 
question  its  validity.  Or,  if  this  might  possibly  be  questioned 
on  theoretical  grounds  merely, — a  kind  of  reflection  for  which 
the  individual  is  scarcely  prepared  at  the  stage  of  his  intel- 
lectual development  which  is  here  supposed; — it  is  surely  i^ot 
wise  in  practical  ways  to  depart  from  the  common  moral  judg- 
ment. But  where  there  is  so  much  difference  on  practical  mat- 
ters as  is  obvious  between  parent  and  children,  teacher  and 
school-mate,  officer  of  the  law  and  tliief,  preacher  and  pew- 
holder,  and  between  what  one  is  on  Sunday  exhorted  to  do 
because  it  is  riglit,  and  what  one  is  tempted  every  week  to 
judge  is  right,  because  it  is  ivanted  to  be  done;  how  shall  the 
individual  escape  the  necessity  of  revising  and  changing  his 
moral  judgments? 

The  enforcement  of  the  need  of  moral  development  through 
a  revision  of  moral  judgments  is  itself  strengthened  in  two 


THE  MORAL  SELF  289 

important  ways.  The  first  of  these  consists  in  bringing  to 
consciousness  other  forms  of  feeling  whicli  are  essentially  re- 
lated to,  but  are  not  identical  with,  the  feeling  of  obligation. 
These  are  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  of  disapprobation, 
and  the  feelings  of  merit  and  demerit.  These  affective  atti- 
tudes of  the  human  consciousness  toward  conduct  and  toward 
character,  when  analyzed,  appear  more  complex  than  the  primi- 
tive and  distinctively  ethical  feeling  of  obligation.  From  it 
they  all  differ  in  the  following  four,  not  unimportant  ways. 

And,  first,  there  is  a  difference  in  the  ethical  feelings  as  re- 
spects their  temporal  relations  to  the  deed  of  will.  In  imagina- 
tion, at  least,  the  feeling  of  obligation  is  fitly  excited  in  view 
of  a  deed  that  is  about  to  be  done.  This  feeling  looks  forward 
to  the  future  conduct;  it  arises  on  contemplation  of  conduct  that 
is  still  to  be.  One  of  its  most  valuable  services  in  assisting  the 
growth  of  intelligent  moral  judgment  is  its  power  to  call  a 
halt  to  impulse  before  it  passes  over  into  deeds.  "  Hold  up !  " 
it  cries,  "  let  us  consider  whether  this  is  really  what  ought  to 
be  done."  The  question  what  ought  to  have  been  done  is 
more  purely  speculative;  it  requires  an  act  of  imagination  in 
order  to  place  the  Self  in  moral  judgment  before  the  deed. 
But  with  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation,  just 
the  reverse  is  true  as  respects  the  temporal  relation  to  the  deed. 
These  feelings  look  backward  upon  the  deed  as  an  already  ac- 
complished fact.  They  ask  judgment  to  be  pronounced  in  the 
light  of  the  answer  to  the  question :  "  How  do  you  feel  about 
it  now  ? "  And  this  involves  complicated  calculations  as  to 
the  consequences,  especially  as  they  affect  one's  position  of 
credit  or  esteem  in  society ;  and  also  one's  feelings  of  self-esteem, 
or  what  we  call  moral  shame  or  moral  pride.  From  this,  it 
follows,  second,  that  the  feeling  of  obligation  constitutes  a 
"  motive  "  for  the  will — an  impelling  or  deterrent  force ;  while 
the  feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation  are  of  a  more 
contemplative,  deliberative,  and  abstract  character.  In  order 
to  allow  them  to  be  attached  to  what  men  call  a  "  cool  judg- 


390  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ment,"  or  a  "  fair  estimate,"  of  any  piece  of  conduct,  or  type 
of  character,  it  is  necessary  to  have  the  intellect  informed  as 
to  a  great  variety  of  the  antecedent  conditions,  and  more  hidden 
constituents,  of  the  object  upon  which  judgment  is  to  be  passed. 

A  third  difference  consists  in  the  relations  which  the  ethical 
feelings  sustain  to  the  experiences  of  pleasure  and  of  pain. 
The  feeling  of  obligation,  when  most  intense  and  worthy  of  a 
high  place  in  the  scale  of  values,  is  often  of  a  highly  painful 
character.  This  is  true  of  it  whether  it  is  found  attached  to  a 
judgment  which  affirms  the  right,  or  to  a  judgment  which 
affirms  the  wrong,  of  a  particular  piece  of  conduct.  And  while 
the  pain  occasioned  by  doing  as  one  feels  one  ought  may  be  very 
intense;  the  pleasure  of  doing  as  one  ought  is  generally  of  a 
rather  mild  and  non-compensatory  value.  It  is  as  though  nature 
would  not  have  us  bow  to  the  authority  of  the  sense  of  obligation 
on  account  of  any  hedonistic  interest  in  our  experience  of  it. 
But  the  case  is  not  the  same  with  the  feelings  of  approbation  and 
disapprobation.  Feelings  of  approbation  are  distinctly  pleas- 
urable ;  and  feelings  of  disapprobation  are  distinctly  painful. 
In  this  connection  we  may  notice  one  of  the  several  fallacies 
which  characterize  all  hedonistic  theories.  If  all  the  pleasures 
of  the  approving  consciences  of  all  mankind  were  qnccd  pleas- 
ures, to  be  placed  in  the  scales  with  the  pains  which  all  mankind 
have  suffered  both  in  doing  the  right  and  in  disapproving  the 
wrong,  there  can  be  little  doubt  which  way  the  scales  would 
turn.  In  a  word,  the  sufferings  of  humanity  far  exceed  its 
pleasures  as  immediate  results  or  accompaniments  of  obedience 
to  the  moral  law — of  following  the  moral  ideal.  Seeking  for 
pleasure  affords  no  sufficient  impulse,  not  to  say  intelligent 
guide,  for  the  development  of  a  Moral  Self. 

There  is  a  fourth  still  more  important  difference  between 
these  two  classes  of  feelings.  The  emotions  with  which  men 
greet  certain  classes  of  conduct  and  certain  types  of  character, 
objectively  regarded,  are  very  similar  to  certain  non-moral 
emotions.      What     we    have    been    speaking    of    as     ethical 


THE  MORAL  SELF  291 

approbation  or  disapprobation  is  about  as  truly  ffisthetieal. 
Thus  the  dilTerence  between  the  way  in  which  men  approve 
what  they  judge  to  be  beautiful  and  what  they  judge  to  be 
morally  right  is  not  so  much  in  the  character  of  the  feeling  aa 
in  the  nature  of  the  objects.  In  the  one  case,  it  is  a  quality  of 
being;  in  the  other,  a  species  of  conduct.  But  conduct  itself 
is  an  exhibition  of  certain  qualities  of  personal  life;  and  men 
are  ready  enougli,  are  indeed  readily  enough  compelled,  to  per- 
sonify the  qualities  of  impersonal  things.  So  that  the  hero, 
who  overcomes  obstacles  by  the  force  of  his  personality,  be- 
comes admired  for  a  sublimity  which  approaches  that  of  the 
sea  or  the  sky;  and  he  is  also  approved  as  one  possessed  in  large 
measure  of  what  is  morally  good.  Heroic  goodness  is  particu- 
larly admirable  from  both  the  aesthetical  and  the  ethical  points 
of  view.  The  qualities  of  heroism,  whether  in  a  good  or  in  a 
bad  cause,  and  whether  in  the  interests  of  good  or  of  bad  inten- 
tions, cannot  be  considered  as  entirely  non-moral  in  char- 
acter. 

The  feelings  of  merit  and  demerit,  with  which  moral  judg- 
ments inevitably  become  complicated  and  by  which  they  are 
enormously  influenced,  are  still  more  complex  and  of  a  sec- 
ondary and  social  character.  The  feeling  of  merit  involves  a 
feeling  of  desert  and  a  vague  feeling  of  right.  In  it  are  in- 
cluded at  least  the  following  factors:  (1)  A  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion to  approve  (I  ought  to  be  morally  approbated  by  my  fel- 
lows) ;  (2)  a  feeling  of  right  to  assert  a  claim  (I  am  entitled 
to  some  form  of  the  good,  which  ought  to  come  to  me,  because 
I  have  complied  with  this  feeling  of  obligation) ;  and  (3)  a 
vague  feeling  of  another's  duty  as  it  were  (thus,  others  ought 
to  treat  me  a  •cordingly").  On  the  contrary,  the  feeling  of 
demerit  involves  the  opposite  of  each  of  these  three  factors.  The 
pleasant  satisfaction  which  the  feeling  of  merit  affords,  when  its 
right  is  satisfied,  is  closely  related  to  the  mild  pleasure  of  a 
gratified  pride;  the  dissatisfaction  following  the  failure  to  be 
approbated  by  others,  and  "  to  be  treated  accordingly,"  is  much 


292  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

more  than  an  equivalent  in  its  power  to  occasion  pain.  Here, 
again,  we  meet  with  another  anomaly  which  impedes  the 
smooth  running  of  ever}^  hedonistic  system  of  morals.  The 
path  along  which  duty  leads,  as  marked  out  by  the  ethical  feel- 
ings, is  much  less  strewn  with  roses  than  with  thorns.  He 
who  thinks  to  pay  himself  for  doing  what  he  ought,  in  coin  of 
the  feeling  of  merit,  will  surely  fail  in  the  business.  Indeed, 
one  of  the  most  curious  of  those  anomalies  with  which  ethical 
study  is  full,  is  encountered  here.  It  is,  as  a  rule,  the  meanest 
and  least  moral  men  who  have  the  most  lively  satisfactions  from 
the  sense  of  their  own  merit,  and  who  most  intensely  feel  their 
right  to  a  reward,  for  the  occasional  small,  meritorious  services 
they  render  their  fellow  men. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  purism  which  holds  to  such  an  in- 
dependent standard  for  measuring  the  right  and  Avrong  of 
conduct,  as  the  judgment  of  the  individual  who  pays  no  regard 
to  the  social  judgments  which  are  incorporated  in  the  cus- 
toms, laws,  and  ])rcvalent  maxims,  and  who  is  uninfluenced  by 
considerations  of  disapprobation  from  others,  and  by  the  feel- 
ing of  deserving  well  of  others,  is  maintaining  a  view  of  the 
nature  of  Moral  Selfhood  which  neither  accords  with  the  data 
of  moral  life,  as  facts,  nor  with  the  most  highly  rational  norm, 
or  ideal  of  such  a  life.  That  these  feelings  of  approbation  and 
merit  (and  their  opposites)  are  powerful  social  influences,  no 
one  can  deny.  Just  as  little,  can  the  thoughtful  student  of 
man's  moral  evolution  deny  that  the  same  feelings  are,  on  the 
whole,  conservative  of  the  good,  and  promotive  of  the  better, 
moral  judgments  to  which  they  become  attached.  Moral  self- 
hood can  be  developed  only  in  society.  Social  and  ethical  unity, 
sufficient  to  constitute  an  environment  not  only  favorable  to, 
but  even  permissible  of,  such  a  development  is  secured  by  these 
emotional  forces.  And  whenever  the  individual  reaches  a  higher 
plane  of  the  true  moral  life,  by  rising  superior  to  the  public 
standards,  in  obedience  to  tlie  obligation  or  allurements  of  an 
inner  ideal,  he  developes  his  own  iiioral  selfhood  the  better  in 


THE  MORAL  SELF  293 

the  form  of  a  reasoned  opposition  to  these  standards.  But  if  in 
rare  cases  he  has,  as  it  were,  to  stand  alone,  and  voluntarily  to 
relinquish  the  hope  of  human  approbation  and  the  right  to 
claim  merit  for  following  the  demands  of  his  own  moral  con- 
sciousness, he  still  makes  his  appeal  for  sympathy  and  approval 
to  a  higher  than  the  present  human  moral  kinship.  He  has 
the  approval  of  future  generations,  or  of  Nature  as  a  Power 
that  makes  for  righteousness,  or  of  Heaven,  with  its  "  cloud  of 
witnesses,"  or  of  God  with  whom  to  stand  alone  is  reward 
enough.  But  this  possession  is  a  social  good,  which  is  somehow 
conceived  of  as  justifying  those  judgments  concerning  the  right 
and  wrong  of  conduct  which  conform  to  a  rational  norm,  an 
ultimate  ideal. 

The  second  class  of  experiences  which  enforce  the  call  to 
moral  development  by  a  constant  revision  of  moral  judgments, 
looking  to  a  growth  in  moral  intelligence,  is  of  a  much  more 
subtile  and,  indeed,  partially  inexplicable  character.  It  has  to 
do  with  what  we  may  venture  to  call  the  "  internalization  "  of 
the  moral  judgment.  By  this  it  is  intended  to  speak  of  the 
turning  of  the  judgment  inward  upon  the  Self;  and  thus,  of 
the  attribution  of  all  forms  of  ethical  feeling — obligation  to 
and  not-to,  approbation  and  disapprobation,  merit  and  demerit 
— to  the  conscious  states  of  the  mind,  to  the  passions,  desires, 
affections,  intentions,  and  purposes,  irrespective  of  the  forms  of 
action  in  which  they  culminate  and  which  are  known  to  others 
as  their  external  signs.  In  this  way  moral  judgment  becomes 
immediate  seZ/-judgment.  Without  growth  in  the  intelligent 
and  accurate  practice  of  self-judgment  no  real  and  high  moral 
development  can  be  reached. 

It  does  not  require  a  large  amount  of  self-consciousness  to 
discover  that  actions,  in  one's  own  case  and  in  the  case  of 
other  fellows,  spring  from  impulses  of  an  emotional  character. 
Of  many  of  the  most  primitive  and  important  of  these  im- 
pulses, the  individual  is  only  dimly  and  very  imperfectly  aware. 
Indeed,  the  basis  of  personal  life  and  personal  development  is 


294  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

laid  in  reflexes  of  which  consciousness  takes  little  or  no  account. 
When  such  impulses  appear  in  consciousness  as  motives  or  in- 
fluences to  action,  their  origin,  nature,  and  significance  may 
not  be  understood  at  all.  The  psycho-physical  mechanism  is 
taking  care  of  all  this  for  the  Self,  without  informing  the  Self 
as  to  what  it  is  about.  And  even  those  sensory-motor  re- 
flexes which  have,  as  the  word  signifies,  a  conscious  side  to  their 
origin,  tend  to  take  the  form  of  unconscious  habits  in  the  sen- 
sory-motor organism ;  indeed,  without  this  tendency  on  their 
part,  the  life  of  intelligence  for  the  self-conscious  mind  could 
not  be  advanced.  But  there  are  other  forms  of  emotional  im- 
pulse whose  very  nature  is  such  as  to  constitute  disturbances, 
or  affective  conditions,  within  the  conscious  mind.  They  are 
those  appetites,  passions,  desires,  sentiments,  inientions,  or 
deliberated  but  feeling-full  plans,  which  every  Self  is  obliged 
to  recognize  as  its  very  own.  On  account  of  their  emotional 
character,  or  inherent  tendency  to  compel  conduct,  they  are 
lumped  together  as  so-called  "  motives,"  under  a  common  ex- 
pressive but  somewhat  misleading  category. 

So  far  as  conduct  is  a  matter  for  external  observation,  and 
for  testing  by  the  application  of  the  standard  of  what  is  cus- 
tomarily approved,  either  "  good "  or  "  bad "  conduct  may 
arise  from  a  variety  of  different  and  even  conflicting  emotions. 
One  man's  motive  to  kill  may  be  avarice,  another's  patriotism; 
still  others  may  do  the  same  deed  from  motives  of  hatred,  sym- 
pathy, jealousy,  or  love.  Doing  a  favor  may  be  due  either  to 
thoughtless  or  to  thoughtful  kindness;  to  a  sycophant's  desire 
to  curry  favor  in  return,  to  the  wish  to  save,  or  to  the  wish 
to  corrupt.  And  so  all  the  way  through,  in  the  case  of  all  the 
so-called  virtues.  There  is  no  deed  so  devilish  in  appearance 
that  it  may  not  spring  from  some  motive  which  the  moral 
judgment  of  the  individual  consecrates  as  right  and  merito- 
rious; and  none  so  seemingly  angelic  that  it  may  not  arise 
in  the  foulest  sources  of  passion  or  prejudice. 

It  does  not  appear  that  children,  unless  expressly  enjoined 


THE  MORAL  SELF  295 

and  instructed,  readily  apply  moral  quality  to  the  motives 
rather  than  to  the  deed.  Even  when  diligently  taught  not  to 
cherish  "  bad  hearts,"  or  to  indulge  secretly  in  "  bad  feelings," 
obedience  to  the  injunction  in  any  thorough  way  is  altogether 
too  mature  an  exercise  for  the  childish  intellect.  In  the  earlier 
stages  of  moral  development,  the  satisfaction  of  the  impulse 
is  the  dominant  consideration;  its  character,  as  a  subject  for 
moral  judgment,  and,  indeed', — for  so  a  certain  school  of 
ethical  writers  would  have  us  suppose — as  the  only  proper  sub- 
ject, of  a  truly  moral  judgment,  is  of  little  concern.  If  the 
savage  or  primitive  man  was,  in  this  respect,  no  more  and  no 
less  savage  and  immoral,  than  the  average  school-boy  of  the 
best  Christian  communities  to-day,  he  troubled  himself  little 
about  his  "bad  heart,"  or  about  the  impurity  and  animal 
baseness  of  the  motives  underlying  most  of  the  conduct  which 
conformed  to  the  then  prevalent  social  customs. 

It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  at  present  a  larger  and 
the  better  portion  of  the  race  do  hold,  and  do  practice,  the 
theory  of  morality  which  attaches  the  moral  judgment  to  the 
self-conscioiis  conditions  of  the  mind.  It  is  no  longer  the  case 
that  only  tlie  action  is  regarded  as  good  or  bad,  according  to 
its  conformity  to  custom;  the  Self  is  regarded  as  good  or 
bad,  according  to  the  feelings  it  indulges  or  cherishes.  Sociolo- 
gists who  deny  this,  or  treat  lightly  of  it,  overlook  the  most 
wonderful  and  inexplicable  of  all  the  data  concerning  man's 
moral  development.  It  is  not  mere  external  facts,  such  as  are 
essentially  non-moral  facts,  but  the  facts  of  estimates,  the 
"  value-facts,"  which  reveal  the  essential  nature  of  man's  moral 
selfhood. 

How  did  this  marvellous  inward  tendency  of  the  moral  judg- 
ment come  about;  and  what  were  the  influences  which  bore 
down  on  man  to  make  him  search  himself,  and  find  within  him- 
self, the  true  field  for  judgment  as  to  the  morally  good  and 
the  morally  bad?  From  the  point  of  view  of  evolutionary 
ethics,  no  question  can  be  proposed  which  is  more  difficult  of 


296  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

a  satisfactory  answer.  Something  undoubtedly — and,  perhaps, 
very  much — must  be  allowed  to  prolonged  human  experience 
with  the  effects  of  motives  so-called.  The  more  essential  and 
primitive  virtues  of  courage,  patience,  endurance,  and  tribal 
sympathy,  as  well  as  those  of  the  domestic  and  friendly  affec- 
tions, counted  most  heavily  in  the  earlier  conditions  of  tribal 
and  individual  life  and  welfare.  They,  therefore,  came  to  be 
approbated  and  deemed  meritorious,  as  of-and-in-themselves 
considered.  Their  opposites  came,  under  the  same  influences, 
to  experience  the  results  of  the  opposition  which  these  condi- 
tions made  necessary.  In  a  word,  the  historical  development 
of  the  virtues  in  accordance  with  the  experimental  testing  of 
their  benefits  to  the  race  is  a  partial  explanation  of  the  prefer- 
ence given  to  certain  motives  as  compared  with  other  motives, 
or  inner  states. 

But  by  far  the  most  important  of  those  influences  which  sug- 
gest and  enforce  the  "  internalization "  of  moral  judgments 
are  of  a  religious  character.  From  the  earliest  dawn  of  human 
history,  and  in  those  regions  of  twilight  or  nearly  complete 
obscurity  where  detailed  history  is  difficult  or  impossible, 
men  have  believed  in  invisible  spiritual  agencies,  which  they 
conceived  to  be  both  like  themselves,  and  yet  also  superior  to 
themselves.  Upon  their  relations  to  these  spirits  they  have 
thought  themselves  to  be  dependent,  at  least  in  some  meas- 
ure, for  human  woes  or  human  welfare.  These  spirits  take 
note  of  man's  actions,  especially  as  his  actions  affect  them  or 
their  favorites  among  men ;  and  they  treat  man  accordingly. 
But  the  gods,  being  somewhat  super-human,  know  about  men 
things  which  men  do  not  know  about  each  other.  The  rela- 
tions of  enmity  or  friendship  in  which  the  spirit  of  man  stands 
to  these  invisible  and  super-human  spirits  are,  of  necessity, 
of  a  more  internal  and  spiritual  character.  Who  shall  conceal 
the  movements  of  his  own  inner  Self  from  those  mysterious 
beings  who  have  so  little  difficulty  in  keeping  their  own 
thoughts,  intentions,  and  movements  concealed?    For  the  gods 


THE  MORAL  SELF  297 

are  very  cunning,  and  know  many  things  hidden  from  men. 
But  as  this  cruder  form  of  religious  belief  developes, — and 
this,  largely  in  dependence  upon  the  development  of  moral 
Selfhood  in  man, — the  conception  of  an  omniscient  and  per- 
fect Ethical  Spirit,  who  searches  the  heart  and  desires  nothing 
less  than  purity  of  heart,  becomes  of  all  causes  most  potent  for 
the  "  internalization "  of  the  moral  judgment. 

The  study  of  the  social  and  religious  forces  which  have 
evolved  an  elaborate  doctrine  of  the  virtues,  and  of  the  corre- 
sponding theories  as  to  moral  sanctions  and  moral  ideals  which 
this  doctrine  implies,  throws  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  nature 
and  evolution  of  the  Moral  Self.  And  yet  the  evolutionary 
theory  seems  here,  as  elsewhere,  to  meet  with  the  limitation 
of  assumptions  in  which,  as  upexplained  and  perhaps  inex- 
plicable, its  very  explanations  themselves  lie  concealed.  The 
fact  is  this :  The  spirit  of  man  has  somehow  come  to  recog- 
nize within  itself  intrinsic  differences  among  its  own  self-con- 
scious states.  Some  are  higher,  nobler,  more  worthy  of  ap- 
proval and  more  meritorious  than  are  others.  To  exercise 
them,  and  to  be  the  kind  of  spirit  in  whom  they  control,  is  made 
compulsory  by  the  distinctively  ethical  feeling  of  obligation. 

"  There  are  two  important  general  assumptions  to  which  one 
is  brought  by  a  study  of  the  nature  and  development  of  moral 
judgment.  First,  man's  intelligence  is  rightfully  regarded 
as  obligating  him  to  its  own  use  in  planning  and  guiding  his 
own  conduct.  Noblesse  oblige, — and  not  less  the  nobility  of 
rationality  than  the  nobility  of  rank  or  birth.  Thus  the 
tliought  is  led  around  again  to  a  position  which  is  in  neigh- 
borly contiguity  with  the  position  from  which  the  discussion 
of  the  nature  of  ethical  judgment  took  its  departure :  so-called 
'  Conscience,'  as  a  matter  of  intellectual  equipment  for  such 
judgment,  is  no  whit  different  from  so-called  ordinary  intelli- 
gence. But  this  'ordinary  intelligence'  is  human  intelligence: 
it  is  man's  intellect,  in  its  full  use,  culminating  in  judgment 
as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.     Moreover,  this  use  of 


2i)fi  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

intelligence  is  itself  either  right  or  wrong — in  the  ethical  mean- 
ing of  the  words :  for  this  use  is  a  species  of  conduct.  And 
the  moral  feelings  of  obligation,  of  approbation  and  disap- 
probation, and  of  merit  and  demerit,  have  as  much  place,  and 
as  binding  authority,  in  respect  of  this,  as  of  any  other  species 
of  conduct.  If  we  generalize  this  fact  which,  like  a  silent 
postulate,  permeates  all  our  estimates  of  the  nature  and  value 
of  ethical  judgments,  and  then  bring  our  generalization  into 
correspondence  with  that  conclusion  to  which  all  our  study  of 
the  nature  of  a  Moral  Self  is  pointing  the  way;  we  may  antici- 
pate the  following  conclusions :  The  intellectual  processes  are, 
of  course,  essential  to  the  existence  of  moral  Selfhood;  the 
noblest  use  of  them  is  characteristic  of  the  Ideal  Self;  and 
such  a  use  is  morally  obligator}',  necessarily  to  be  approbated 
by  moral  consciousness,  and  to  be  considered  meritorious; 
for  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the  realization  of  the  Ideal  of 
a  perfect  Self  existing  in   social  relations  with  other  selves. 

"  The  second  assumption  involved  in  the  doctrine  of  ethical 
judgment  is  this:  Only  through  the  exercise  of  intelligence 
does  the  so-called  '  motive '  pass  over,  as  it  were,  into  the 
choice  and  into  the  deed.  It  is  not  motive  alone,  or  judgment 
alone,  or  deliberate  choice  alone,  whether  followed  or  not  by 
a  successful  executive  action,  to  which  the  qualification  of  moral 
goodness  or  badness  should  be  attached.  It  is  rather  to  the 
total  Self  in  action — Feeling,  Intellect,  and  Will — in  a  living 
unity.  Motives  must,  indeed,  be  judged  morally;  but  they 
must  also  be  more  or  less  willed,  in  order  really  to  become 
motives.  Judgments,  too,  are  motived  and  subjects  of  volition. 
The  highest  expressions  of  will,  the  deliberate  choices,  are  them- 
selves the  subject  of  both  moral  feeling  and  moral  judgment. 
Good  intentions  alone  do  not  constitute  a  perfect  moral  good; 
the  conceived  results  are  an  integral  part  of  the  finished  piece 
of  conduct.  Clear  conception  is  an  intellectual  performance. 
A  virtuous  intellect  is  essential  to  a  virtuous  man." 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  understand  the  ethical  develop- 


THE  MORAL  SELF  209 

ment  of  mankind  in  so  far  as  it  is  due  to  the  growth  of  in- 
telligence in  the  race.  This  evolution  follows  the  same  laws  as 
those  which  control  man's  total  development  of  intelligence.  In 
a  certain  somewhat  loose  way,  three  stages  may  be  distinguished. 
In  the  earliest  stage  it  is  feeling  largely,  if  not  almost  wholly, 
which  determines  the  judgment;  in  this  stage  the  judgment  ia 
scarcely  more  than  a  declaration  of  the  fact  of  feeling.  Chil- 
dren and  childish  men  think  little  as  to  why  they  feel  and 
therefore  judge  as  they  do ;  they  know  almost  nothing  of  the 
influences  which  are  operative  upon  their  own  minds.  This 
is  true  whether  these  influences  belong  to  the  original  constitu- 
tion of  human  nature,  or  are  themselves  the  results  of  the  pre- 
vious experiences  of  the  race.  In  a  word,  amongst  savages  as 
amongst  the  children  of  civilized  communities,  judgments  about 
the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct  arise  in  blind,  instinctive  feel- 
ings. If  we  could  get  very  near  to  the  so-called  primitive 
man,  we  should  undoubtedly  find  him  yet  more  a  creature  and 
a  subject  of  impulsive  feeling.  "We  should  find  him — if  as 
yet  man,  however  primitive — moved  by  selfish  passions  and 
emotions  to  do  certain  things  which  feelings  of  sympathy  and 
sentiments  of  obligation  and  of  ethical  and  ssthetical  admira- 
tion and  approbation  were  moving  him  not  to  do.  We  should 
find  him  in  this  strange  conflict  of  feeling,  this  condition  of 
schism  between  the  higher  and  lower  self;  but  the  schism  would 
not  be  comprehended ;  nor  would  the  grounds  be  recognized 
on  which  the  authority  of  the  higher  moral  consciousness  must 
be  reposed.  These  grounds  must  be  wrought  out  in  experience; 
they  must  be  discovered  and  proved  by  the  growth  of  intelli- 
gence. 

The  second  stage  in  the  evolution  of  moral  judgments  is 
reached  whenever  experience  of  the  effects  of  conduct  has  em- 
bodied itself  in  customs;  or  in  the  form  of  moral  maxims, 
precepts,  and  regulations;  or  in  the  shape  of  something  re- 
sembling a  code  of  conduct  defining  what  is  to  be  esteemed 
right,  what  wrong,  by  the  community.    But  even  at  this  stage 


300  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  multitude  of  individuals  in  their  private  ethical  judgments 
only  echo  and  reiterate,  as  they  for  the  most  part  unques- 
tioningly  accept,  the  generalizations  reached  in  some  form  by 
the  generations  of  their  predecessors  in  the  moral  life.  In 
this  stage,  whenever  the  attempt  is  made  to  give  reasons  for 
any  particular  judgment,  such  an  attempt  ends  in  a  reference 
to  the  fact,  as  bare  fact,  of  the  conclusions  already  accepted 
by  the  majority.  Thus  most  of  the  current  reasoning  on  moral 
matters  might  be  summarized  in  the  one  major  premise  for 
the  standard  ethical  syllogism :  It  is  right  to  follow  the  cus- 
toms; doing  right  is  doing  as  the  ancients  have  done  and  as 
people  generally  do  now. 

But  even  this  stage  in  the  evolution  of  ethical  judgment 
cannot  come  into  existence,  much  less  long  continue  to  exist, 
without  certain  individuals  at  least  making  considerable  ad- 
vances into  a  third  and  higher  stage.  In  this  third  stage,  the 
science  and  philosophy  of  conduct  become,  to  some  extent,  the 
interest  and  the  attainment  of  the  multitude  of  individuals 
of  whom  society  consists. 

The  history  of  ethical  evolution  by  no  means,  of  course,  war- 
rants us  in  making  a  clean-cut  separation  between  these  dif- 
ferent stages  of  man's  ethical  progress.  Other  factors  and 
laws  than  those  which  are  distinctly  intellectual  take  part  in 
this  evolution.  No  community  at  any  time  can  be  regarded  as 
stationary  in  either  one  of  these  three  stages,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  examples  of  the  other  stages. 

Amongst  the  lowest  savages  are  found  some  who,  more  than 
others,  think  for  themselves  touching  matters  of  conduct: 
amongst  the  most  highly  cultured  ethically,  the  majority,  for 
most  of  their  ethical  judgments,  trust  to  unreasoned  feeling 
or  accept  the  conclusions  handed  down  from  preceding  genera- 
tions. And  it  is  well  that  it  is  so.  For  thus  the  "  cake  of  cus- 
tom "  is  formed ;  only  thus  could  enough  of  uniformity  be  se- 
cured to  constitute  a  true  and  safe  social  environment  such 
as  is  the  necessary  presupposition  of  any  ethical  life  or  ethical 


THE  MORAL  SELF  301 

development.  But  all  tlie  race — or  at  least,  that  portion  of 
it  which  is  undergoing  a  real  moral  evolution — is  learning 
more  and  more  how  to  make  up  its  mind,  on  the  ground  of 
an  enlarging  experience  and  by  the  use  of  its  improved  powers 
of  reasoning,  regarding  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  A 
progress  in  ethical  enlightenment  is  certainly  taking  place  with 
this  portion  of  mankind ;  but  whether  this  portion,  or  the  whole 
of  mankind,  is  growing  better  in  disposition  and  in  moral  pur- 
poses, in  proportion  to  its  increased  enlightenment — why!  this 
is  another  and  distinctly  broader  and  more  difficult  question. 
It  is  not  enough,  however,  to  constitute  a  Moral  Self  that  the 
ethical  feelings  should  arise  in  consciousness  and  become  self- 
appropriated;  or  that  intelligence  should  discover  what  moral 
judgments  correspond  to  the  established  customs  in  matters 
of  conduct,  or  even  to  the  intrinsic  qualities  of  the  different 
feelings,  sentiments,  purposes,  and  habits  of  the  self-conscious 
mind.  The  development  of  moral  selfhood,  especially  as  it 
involves  an  improvement  and  rise  in  the  scale  of  moral  values, 
depends  upon  self-determination.  And,  indeed,  self-determina- 
tion has  been  either  implied  or  expressly  insisted  upon  in  all 
that  has  thus  far  been  said  about  the  evolution  of  moral  in- 
telligence, both  in  the  individual  and  in  the  race.  To  form 
intelligent  and  morally  right  judgments,  there  must  be  at- 
tention, discrimination,  choice;  the  intellect  is  active  in  all  this; 
the  truly  moral  judgment  is  formed,  not  forced.  Moreover, 
ethical  judgment  not  only  involves,  but  normally  and  neces- 
sarily issues  in,  acts  of  self-determination.  Its  predicate  is 
the  right  or  wrong  of  conduct;  its  issue  is  in  doing  something, 
even  if  this  doing  be  only  to  suppress,  or  to  indulge  and  cher- 
ish, some  secret  emotion  or  intention.  The  moral  problem 
before  the  individual  is :  "  Will  you  determine  yourself  in 
this  way  or  in  that;  will  you  have  this  piece  or  that  other 
piece  of  conduct  to  be  your  very  own  ? "  In  order,  then,  to 
secure  the  development  of  moral  selfhood,  self-determination 
must  become  moral  freedom.    But  this  is  not  to  say  that  the 


302  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

human  mind  must  attain  any  wholly  new  species  of  activity. 
If  man  were  the  mind  that  he  is,  without  being  also  a  Moral 
Self,  nothing  would  have  to  be  added  to  his  so-called  active 
powers,  as  such,  in  order  to  constitute  him  a  morally  free  spirit. 
What  would  be  necessary  would  be  only  (a  truly  momentous 
"only")  to  endow  him  with  ethical  feelings,  and  then  to  place 
him  in  social  relations  with  others  of  his  own  kind.  It  is  not 
ethics  which  creates  for  physics  and  biology  and  cerebral  physi- 
ology, the  mystery  of  self-determination.  The  mystery  is  there; 
and  the  fact  of  such  self-determination  is  the  limit  which  these 
sciences  have  to  accept  in  all  their  explanations  of  every  phe- 
nomenon with  which  the  active  human  mind  has  anything  to 
do.  Moreover,  as  we  have  already  shown,  neither  the  theory  of 
knowledge  nor  the  metaphysics  of  man  or  of  things  can  explain 
or  confute  this  fact  of  the  self-determining  character  of  self- 
conscious  mind.  To  be  self-determining  is  really  to  be  what  it 
essentially  is.  The  antinomies  in  the  epistemological  realm 
which  are  designed  to  disprove  the  reality  of  experience  are 
mere  logical  abstractions,  pale  ghosts  of  a  hypothetical  nature 
which  have  no  corresponding  real  existences.  All  real  exist- 
ences have  natures  which  are  more  or  less — however  uncon- 
sciously— self-determining.  And  in  this  irresolvable,  unanalyz- 
able,  and  inexplicable  mystery,  the  sciences  which  deal  with 
things  find,  on  the  one  hand,  an  inexhaustible  store  of  fictitious 
explanations,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  an  immovable  limit  to 
all  truly  scientific  explanations. 

Still  further,  it  has  been  shown  that  the  whole  conception 
of  a  causal  nexus,  and  of  laws  determining  the  relations  of 
things  within  this  causal  nexus,  itself  arises  from  man's  experi- 
ence, as  a  consciously  self-determining  being  with  other  beings 
which  he  cannot  consciously  determine.  And  there  is  not  in 
all  the  history  of  human  intellectual  development  a  more  un- 
justifiable exhibition  of  intellectual  arrogance,  than  the  claim 
that  the  doctrine  of  man's  conscious  self-determination  has 
been,  or  indeed  can  be,  disproved  by  the  conclusions  of  the 


THE  MORAL  SELF  303 

physical  and  natural  sciences.  All  that  science  knows,  or 
ever  can  know,  about  reality  and  about  the  relations  of  really 
existent  beings,  whether  unconscious  but  self-like  things  or 
self-conscious  minds,  is  dependent  upon  its  keeping  faith  with 
its  owji  luiderlying  assumpti(^)i . 

It  belongs,  then,  to  the  philosophy  of  conduct  in  dealing  with 
the  problem  of  moral  freedom,  to  avail  itself  of  what  the  theory 
of  knowledge  and  the  metaphysics  of  mind  have  already  made 
clear.  The  problem  is  this:  How  does  man,  as  a  moral  being 
endowed  with  ethical  feelings  and  placed  in  social  relations, 
developo  and  exhibit  that  kind  and  degree  of  self-determination 
Avhich  is  necessary  for  a  Moral  Self?  In  weighing  this  prob- 
lem the  reasons  for  affirming  the  reality  of  self-determination 
are  not  only  largely  increased,  but  are  also  raised  to  a  much 
higher  stage  of  importance  and  significance.  The  metaphysical 
difficulties,  and  so-called  scientific  objections,  are  on  the  con- 
trary in  no  respect  essentially  changed.  From  the  theoretical 
point  of  view,  then,  the  affirmative  side  of  the  problem  of 
moral  freedom  has  a  great  advantage.  From  the  practical  side, 
and  as  a  matter  of  concernment  for  a  rational  view  of  human 
moral  nature,  and  of  the  laws  of  moral  life,  the  reasons  for 
espousing  this  side  are  mandatory. 

"  The  possession  of  any  degree  of  moral  freedom,  and  the 
development  of  its  higher  and  more  significant  degrees,  are  de- 
pendent in  all  cases  upon  the  possession  and  development  of  all 
the  faculties  which  go  to  make  up  man's  moral  nature.^  The 
problem  of  ethics  is  therefore  not  decided,  it  is  not  even  prop- 
erly stated,  when  only  the  facts  that  concern  the  purely  volun- 
tary aspects  of  consciousness  are  considered.  Neither  mere 
arbitrariness  of  will,  nor  machine-like  and  necessitated  action 
of  will,  can  constitute  the  basis  of  a  truly  moral  freedom.  For, 
indeed,  the  problem  includes  much  more  than  this.     Choices 

1  For  a  fuller  treatment  of  the  subject  see  the  Chapter  on 
"  Moral  Freedom "  in  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  from 
which  the  following  quotations  are  taken. 


304  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

to  follow  the  ideal  forms  of  that  which  is  esteemed  morally 
good  cannot  be  made  by  a  mere  fiat  of  will,  whether  wholly 
unmotived  or  strictly  determined;  the  presence  in  consciousness 
of  such  ideals  and  the  conscious  evaluation  of  them  from  the 
moral  point  of  view  is  necessary  to  their  choice.    I  cannot  will 
to  adhere  to  my  feeling  of  obligation  rather  than  yield  to  my 
passion  or  desire,  unless  I  have  such  feeling  of  obligation;  nor 
can  I  choose  that  course  of  conduct  which  I  judge  to  be  right, 
unless  I  am  capable  of  a  judgment  which  shall  bring  the  con- 
duct under  the  category  of  the  right.     And  without  the  pow- 
erful  influence   from  the  feelings   of  moral   approval   and   of 
merit  (and  their  opposites)  it  cannot  be  contended  that  men 
would  ever  attain  to  a  genuine  moral  freedom.     It  is  in  the 
neglect  of  these  considerations  that  some  of  the  antinomies  which 
are  forced  into  the  problem  of  a  so-called  freedom  of  the  will 
have  their  origin.    *  Freedom  of  the  will '  is,  as  we  have  already 
had  abundant  reason  to  observe,  a  term  which  would  better  be 
abandoned  by  ethics.     Moral  freedom  for  the  human  Self; — 
What  is  it  in  fact,  and  essentially,  in  spite  of  its  many  degrees 
of  intensity,  so  to  say,  and  its  different  forms  of  manifestation  ? 
— this  is  the  primary  ethical  question.    And  has  moral  freedom 
in  fact  such  a  character  that,  before  the  same  moral  conscious- 
ness which  is  its  own  severe  and,  when  well  cultivated,  intelli- 
gent critic,   we  may  justify   the   conclusion  that  the  present 
social  system  has  in  it  at  least  the  seeds  of  rationality? 

"  Certain  facts  of  indubitable  experience  exist,  on  the  basis 
of  which  may  be  placed  our  conception  of  the  nature  of  man's 
choices,  and  of  the  part  which  they  play  in  the  moral  life  and 
moral  development.  But  even  these  facts  lose  all  their  highest 
value  and  most  of  their  significance,  when  we  attempt  to  regard 
them  as  separable  from  the  development  of  human  life,  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  race. 

"  One  word  more  of  preliminary  cautioning  seems  desirable. 
This  has  reference  to  the  chief  fallacy  in  discussing  this  prob- 
lem which  affects  those  metaphysically  inclined.     The  fallacy 


THE  MORAL  SELF  305 

is  that  of  mistaking  conceptions  for  entities,  functions  for 
realities,  relations  for  pre-existent  and  efficient  causes.  In  a 
word,  it  is  the  fallacy  of  hypostasizing.  For  example,  '  Law  ' 
never  does  anything,  or  accounts  for  anything, — no  matter 
how  imposing  the  capital  with  which  one  spells  the  word. 
*  Necessity  '  creates  no  real  bond ;  and  '  Chance  '  and  *  Contin- 
gency ' — whether  whispered  with  bated  breath  by  the  frightened 
worshipper  of  the  great  modern  World-Machine,  or  boldly  pro- 
claimed by  the  avowed  enemy  of  such  a  monstrosity — can  no 
more  injure  the  existing  arrangement  of  things  than  the  most 
inevitable  '  Fate '  can  conserve  this  arrangement  by  preventing 
man's  interference  with  it  all.  Ghosts  of  abstractions,  whether 
theological  or  scientific,  whether  redolent  of  the  smell  of  the 
tombs  in  which  they  should  have  been  buried  ages  ago,  or 
emitting  whiffs  of  the  latest  patent  embalming  fluid,  can  ejffect 
neither  good  nor  harm  outside  of  the  mind  of  man.  And  when 
one  is  solemnly  told  that  the  Law  of  Causation  forbids  this  or 
compels  the  other;  that  human  self-determination  would 
destroy  the  integrity  of  the  physical  Universe;  or  that  the 
Conservation  and  Correlation  of  Energy  does  not  admit  of  in- 
fluences '  passing  over,'  etc.,  from  the  physical  to  the  psychical 
realm ;  one  may  always  demand  a  re-examination  of  the  war- 
rant in  facts  for  such  a  sweeping  use  of  ideas  whose  force  is 
only  that  of  the  highest  potency  of  logical  generalization. 

"  What  now  are  those  facts  of  a  well-nigh,  if  not  quite  uni- 
versal human  experience,  from  which  flows  the  conception  of  a 
real  moral  freedom  for  man ;  and  to  which  this  conception  must 
be  referred  in  the  effort  to  determine  more  critically  its  rational 
import?  These  facts  may  be  divided  between  two  related  but 
not  identical  forms  of  consciousness.  They  may  be  called  the 
consciousness  of  ability  and  the  consciousness  of  imputa- 
bility;  or  the  consciousness  of  the  Self  as  active  and 
the  consciousness  of  the  Self  as  responsible.  As  these 
facts  appear  in  the  stream  of  the  individual's  conscious 
life,   and   as  they  become   data  for  the  conception   of  man's 


306  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

moral  freedom,  they  are  expressed  by  such  language  as  the 
following :  '  I  can '  and  '  I  know  that  I  can ' ;  and  because  '  I 
ouglit  to  have'  (or  I  ought  not  to  have),  I  am  Avorthy  of  ap- 
proval (or  of  disapproval)  and  of  merit  (or  of  demerit).  In 
the  one  case,  the  Self  contemplates  itself  as  in  the  presence  of 
its  own  deed  and  affirms  that  the  choice  to  do,  or  not  to  do, 
in  spite  of  all  external  and  internal  influence,  is,  nevertheless, 
its  very  own.  /  make  my  choice ;  and  the  '  I '  that  chooses  is 
not  simply  the  being  that  was  yesterday,  or  even  a  moment 
since;  the  rather  is  it  the  living,  present,  here-and-now-being 
of  the  Self.  In  the  other  case  the  Self  contemplates  its  own 
deed  as  already  done,  and  affirms  that  this  deed  which  was 
chosen,  together  with  a  certain  greater  or  less  amount  of  the 
consequences  following  from  tlie  deed,  belongs  to  itself;  and 
in  consequence,  so  does  also  the  blame  or  praise,  the  punishment 
or  the  reward.  I  did  this  thing,  for  it  was  my  choice;  and  my 
living,  present  Self  doth  reasonably  assume  as  its  own  the 
moral  predicaments  of  its  own  choosing.  Such  are  the  facts  of 
human  experience,  when  this  experience  reaches  that  stage  of 
development  which  affords  the  clearest  and  most  trustworthy 
data  for  a  conception  of  moral  freedom.  But  with  inferior  de- 
grees the  same  experience  manifests  itself  as  an  almost  cease- 
less accompaniment  of,  and  a  substantial  factor  in,  the  unfold- 
ing of  the  moral  life." 

Let  us  now  examine  somewhat  more  carefully  these  two 
classes  of  general  facts  belonging  to  man's  ethical  consciousness. 

Nothing  is  more  primitive  or  essential  in  the  development 
of  personal  life  than  the  consciousness  of  power.  Without  it, 
no  Self  can  exist,  whether  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  own  self- 
consciousness  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  outside  ob- 
server. To  convert  this  into  a  species  of  moral  faculty  it  is 
only  necessary  that  it  should  be  recognized  by  the  Self  as  an 
ability  to  choose  one  piece  of  conduct,  or  course  of  conduct, 
rather  than  another;  and,  among  tlie  different  soliciting  or  con- 
flicting motives  to  select  one  as  preferred  and  adopted  rather 


THE  MORAL  SELF  307 

than  the  others.  By  its  possessor  this  ability  is  invariably 
recognized  as  belonging  to  the  Self,  as  a  species  of  self-activity; 
but  also  as  an  ability  which  has  its  limitations  and  its  degrees, 
and  which  may  be  lost  and  regained,  or  irrecoverably  lost. 
The  complex  truths  of  experience  of  this  kind  are  expressed  in 
such  popular  language  as  the  following :  "  I  know  1  can  " ;  "I 
know  I  could  have " ;  "I  do  not  know  whether  I  can " ;  "I 
fear  I  cannot " ;  or  "  I  am  sure  I  shall  not  be  able,"  etc.  This 
consciousness  of  ability  to  determine  one's  position  toward  one's 
external  behavior,  and  toward  one's  emotional  impulses  and  in- 
ternal tendencies  and  solicitations  to  action,  culminates  in 
deliberate  choice.  In  deliberate  choice,  where  types  of  character 
and  ideals  of  conduct  come  before  the  mind  to  solicit  it  for  its 
voluntary  adoption  and  allegiance,  moral  selfhood  attains  its 
highest  possible  form  of  self-realization.  But  where  the  choices 
are  habitually  subjugated  by  passions  that  blind  the  moral 
judgment,  moral  freedom  may  ebb  so  low  that  little  of  moral 
self-hood  remains  to  hide  behind  the  mask  of  being  a  man. 

As  to  the  consciousness  of  imputability  and  the  immense  in- 
fluence which  it  has  upon  all  human  affairs  in  all  manner  of 
social  conditions  and  relations,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  The 
phenomena  of  ethical  pride  and  shame,  of  the  claims  made  by 
the  pure  conscience  and  the  remorseful  consciousness  to  be  self- 
rewarded  or  self-punished,  show  the  workings  of  this  influence 
in  the  life  of  the  individual.  The  universal  customs  and  the 
language  of  men  with  reference  to  each  other's  character  and 
deeds,  show  the  strength  of  the  same  influence  in  society  at 
large.  Is  wrong  done?  The  blame  cannot  be  left  mid-air,  or 
assigned  to  beings  conceived  of  as  mere  lifeless  and  unconscious 
things;  it  must  be  located  in  some  at  least  quasi-personal 
being;  it  must  be  imputed  to  some  Self.  It  is  true  that  this 
fact  of  the  imputability  of  conduct  is  obscured,  or  made  in- 
effective and  bizarre  by  crude  theories  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
Self.  It  is  also  true  that  a  certain  solidarity  of  the  race  seems 
to  assert  itself  in  the  form  habitually  taken  by  the  conscious- 


308  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ness  corresponding  to  the  term.  Members  of  the  same  family, 
tribe,  nation,  race,  often  seem  compelled  to  feel  a  portion  of 
the  responsibility  for  deeds  that  are  obviously  done,  7iot  by 
themselves,  but  by  a  sort  of  corporation  in  which  they  are 
involved  as  members.  In  the  development  of  moral  judgments 
and  moral  ideals,  however,  the  changes  in  the  conceptions  of 
personal  life  do  not  impair  but  rather  strengthen  the  conclu- 
sion. Responsibility  attaches  reasonably  to  those  beings  only 
who  have  moral  freedom;  imputability  implies  moral  discern^ 
ment  and  ability  to  determine  conduct  and  character  for  one's 
self.  For  the  total  complex  fact  is  not  simply  the  fact  of 
conduct  imputed  and  treated  accordingly;  it  is  rather  the  fact 
of  conduct  imputable  and  so  reasonably  treated  accordingly. 
The  "  scape-goat "  theory  and  practice  are  in  a  measure  diffi- 
cult to  avoid;  but  to  enlightened  moral  judgment  they  become 
unreasonable  and  even  intolerable. 

After  what  has  already  been  said  in  various  connections 
about  the  metaphysics  of  nature  and  of  mind  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  do  more  than  briefly  to  mention  the  argu- 
ments which  are  customarily  opposed  to  the  reality  of  a  devel- 
opment that  implies  moral  freedom  for  the  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind.  Even  in  this  late  day  some  writers, 
indeed,  continue  to  quote  the  dictum  attributed  to  Spinoza 
which  identifies  man's  consciousness  of  ability  with  his  igno- 
rance of  the  determining  causes.  Man  is  no  more  free  than 
would  be  the  arrow  which  became  conscious  of  going  toward 
the  mark,  but  knew  nothing  of  the  science  of  strains,  pressure 
from  atmosphere,  down-pull  of  gravity,  etc.  Such  a  bit  of 
material  would  of  necessity  imagine  itself  free.  But  this  ab- 
straction of  an  arrow  no  more  resembles  a  real  self-conscious 
mind  than  did  that  other  abstraction  of  an  arrow  which,  ac- 
cording to  the  logic  of  the  Greek  Sophists,  could  not  move  at 
all !  Neither  Nature  in  the  large,  as  modern  science  knows  it, 
nor  the  nature  of  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind, 
bear  any  resemblance  to  empty  space  and  inert  matter;  to  the 


THE  MORAL  SELF  309 

Void  of  Greek  philosophy  or  to  the  purely  a  priori  and  logical 
System  of  Spinoza,  with  its  barren  "  Affects  "  and  statical  Re- 
lations. 

Scarcely  less  perverse  and  contrary  to  the  facts  of  experience 
is  the  objection  which  would  substitute  for  the  rich  content  of 
a  self-conscious  and  self -determining  life  a  sort  of  rigid  and 
foredoomed  mechanism  of  psychoses,  constructed  after  the 
analogy  of  a  piece  of  physical  machinery.  A  choice  is  then 
offered  between  this  mechanical  theory  and  the  theory  -of 
purely  unreasoned  and  incalculable  arbitrariness.  Such  is  not, 
however,  the  alternative;  for  neither  of  these  theories  expresses 
at  all  truly  the  actual  life  of  the  Moral  Self.  If,  in  fact,  we  are 
called  on  to  explain  the  workings  of  the  so-called  faculties  un- 
der the  control  of  a  causal  nexus,  we  may  as  well  say  that  the 
will  governs  intellect  and  controls  feelings  as  that  intellect 
guides,  and  feeling  influences  or  determines,  the  will.  Neither 
does  it  express  the  truth  of  experience  simply  to  assert  that 
motives  influence  the  will  according  to  the  apparent  or  the  real 
intensity  of  their  motive  force.  On  the  contrary,  motives  are 
chosen  on  account  of  their  excellence,  or  relation  to  an  ideal, 
whenever  they  are  brought  into  the  focus  of  a  truly  moral  con- 
sciousness. And  in  all  truly  moral  transactions,  it  is  the  attitude 
of  the  Self,  as  self-determining,  toward  the  emotional  impulses, 
which  decides  the  question  of  fact,  whether  the  impulses  shall 
become  "motives"  to  action  in  the  fullest  meaning  of  the 
term. 

Finally:  No  philosophy  of  conduct  is  possible  which  does 
not  find  room  for  the  facts  of  experience,  and  for  the  theo- 
retical construction  of  moral  principles,  that  are  implied  in  a 
valid  conception  of  "  Character."  It  is  under  the  laws  which 
control  the  formation  of  character  that  man  gains  such  moral 
freedom  as  he  has,  and  uses  this  freedom  in  the  continuance 
and  development  of  a  truly  moral  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  conception  of  character  cannot  itself  be  formed  without 
taking  into  account  those  conscious  experiences  in  which  the 


310  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

conception  of  moral  freedom  has  its  origin;  and  any  such  con- 
ception of  character  as  contravenes  and  annuls  the  conception 
of  freedom  is  itself  unfit  to  command  our  intellectual  allegiance 
and  is  injurious  to  the  morals  of  mankind.  What  men  call 
"  character  "  is  no  entity,  no  self-existent  principle,  capable  of 
playing  an  independent  part  in  the  dynamics  of  the  moral  life. 
The  nature  of  any  existence  is  merely  the  sum-total  of  those 
more  uniform  ways  of  behavior  by  which  we  are  able,  for  pur- 
poses of  knowledge,  and  the  communication  of  knowledge,  to 
distinguish  it  from  other  existences.  But  the  character  of  a 
Self  is  a  quite  different  affair  from  the  nature  of  a  Thing.  For 
the  character  of  a  Self  always  includes  the  choices,  and  the 
results  of  the  choices,  in  exercising  which  it  has  been  self-de- 
termining. What  ethics  seeks  is  not  some  hidden  statical  core 
of  reality  which  stands  in  the  relation  of  a  universal  and  omnip- 
otent cause  to  each  of  the  individual  choices;  the  reality  of 
the  individual  Moral  Self  is  rather  itself  in  a  measure  the 
constantly  varying  resultant  of  these  choices.  A  man's  char- 
acter is  not  something  external  to  himself  which,  as  a  finished 
product  of  the  past  or  as  an  ea^^m-voluntary,  determining 
force,  gives  the  entire  reason  why  he  chooses  as  he  does  choose. 
On  a  basis  of  inherited  potentialities,  and  under  a  variety  of 
influences  from  the  total,  constantly  changing  environment, 
and  in  a  certain  subjection  to  the  principle  of  habit,  Every 
Self,  nevertheless,  progressively  determines  its  oivn  character. 
It  will,  of  course,  be  seen  that  our  view  throws  complete 
discredit  on  tlie  empty  boast  of  a  so-called  scientific  Determin- 
ism. It  is  vain  to  say  that  if  we  only  knew  all  the  motives, 
both  as  coming  from  outside  influences, — causes  of  the  environ- 
ment,— and  also  as  due  to  the  acquired  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual,— causes  of  habit;  then  we  should  be  able  to  predict 
with  a  perfect  certainty  every  new  choice,  whether  as  between 
motives  or  of  different  courses  of  conduct.  The  reply  to  this 
proposition  is  that  the  proposition  itself  is  intrinsically  absurd. 
No  such  knowledge  can  ever  be  conceived  of  as  applying  to  a 


THE  MORAL  SELF  311 

true  Moral  Self.  A  true  Moral  Self,  of  its  very  nature,  can 
never  be  supposed  to  be  in  tbe  condition  of  a  statical  and  wholly 
calculable  kind  of  existence  and  habit  of  behavior.  The  very 
essence  of  moral  development  is  such  as  to  secure  a  lasting  resi- 
duum of  the  unexplained  and  the  scientifically  inexplicable. 
Do  we  need  again  to  point  out  how  all  the  explanations  of  sci- 
ence end  in  the  unexplained  nature  of  things  and  of  minds? 

Those  great  principles  which  are  true  for  the  other  main 
branches  of  philosophy  are  also  true  for  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct. These  principles  group  themselves  about  two  compre- 
hensive conceptions  which  seem  to  us  to  be  shaping  the  thought 
and  the  conduct  of  the  present  age.  They  are,  of  course,  not 
new,  either  in  their  total  complexion  or  in  any  of  their  more  im- 
portant factors;  otherwise  they  could  not  be  so  comprehensive 
and  influential  as  they  are.  But  they  are  receiving  new  and 
enlarged  meanings,  and  they  are  made  to  serve  more  extended 
and  illumining  uses.  These  are  the  conception  of  Evolu- 
tion, of  the  principle  of  becoming,  and  the  conception  of  Self- 
hood, especially  as  having  its  roots  in,  and  as  reaching  out 
into,  social  connections.  It  is  enlarged  and  truer  notions  of 
Personality  and  of  Development  which  are  sought  by  the  reflect- 
ive thinking  of  the  age. 

When,  then,  such  fulness  of  significance  and  range  of  influ- 
ence are  claimed  for  the  conception  of  the  Moral  Self,  it  must 
not  be  imagined  that  any  of  the  legitimate  rights  of  the  other 
conception,  the  conception  of  evolution,  are  invaded  or  denied. 
The  history  of  morals,  and  the  current  opinions  and  practices  of 
the  time,  as  well  as  all  the  most  profound  and  comprehensive  of 
ethical  principles,  cannot  be  understood  without  giving  due  in- 
fluence to  both  these  conceptions.  The  Moral  Self,  in  a  process 
of  Development  toward  the  Social  Ideal, — this  complex  of  con- 
ceptions contains  the  whole  domain  of  investigation  for  the 
student  of  ethics.  What  is  the  essential  nature  of  the  subject  of 
conduct,  the  ethical  being  of  man?  It  is  moral  selfhood,  as  it 
has  already  been  described.    But  for  every  individual  man,  and 


312  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

for  the  whole  race  of  men,  conduct  is  some  sort  of  a  career ;  it  is 
subject  to  the  principle  of  continuity;  it  is  a  matter  of  history, 
and  of  the  growth  from  beginnings  toward  ends,  in  the  ongo- 
ing of  time;  it  is  something  which  can  neither  be  described 
nor  even  be  conceived  of,  except  as  the  individual  is  regarded 
in  his  physical,  and  especially  in  his  social,  environment.  The 
principle  of  evolution  applies,  then,  in  ethics;  but  in  no  super- 
ficial or  merely  external  way.  The  Moral  Self  is  a  life-growth, 
and  so  subject — although  on  its  own  special  terms,  as  it  were — 
to  a  continuous  development. 

The  essential  factors  and  prominent  aspects  of  moral  de- 
velopment may  remain  the  same  amidst  a  number  of  forms  in 
which  the  Ideal  assumes  more  definite  outlines;  and  in  spite 
of  a  great  variety  of  concrete  habits  of  action,  under  varying 
conditions  and  changes  in  the  social  environment.  This  Ideal 
may  be  the  idea  of  a  so-called  moral  law,  or  the  idea  of  a 
perfected  personality,  or  the  idea  of  a  Divine  Will;  or  it  may 
be  some  yet  more  inclusive  form  of  a  social  constitution.  With 
one  good  man  the  object  which  seems  worthy  of  commanding 
him  may  be  conceived  of  as  an  impersonal  principle,  an  un- 
selfish and  unswerving  obedience  to  which  is  recognized  as 
summing  up  the  entire  obligation  of  man;  with  another,  the 
conception  of  an  infinitely  worthy  personal  Being,  in  whose 
personal  characteristics  they  may  share  who  make  the  attain- 
ment of  this  ideal  the  object  of  their  life-endeavor,  may  be 
substituted  for  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  principle.  With 
still  another,  the  perfectibility  by  human  efforts,  of  society 
seems  to  furnish  the  good,  to  strive  for  which  with  the  strenu- 
ous life,  is  the  whole  duty  of  him  who  would  attain  the  supreme 
moral  Good. 

Each  of  these,  and  all  other  forms  of  defining  that  ideal 
which  is  the  perfect  satisfaction  and  permanent  source  of  in- 
spiration for  the  development  of  moral  selfhood,  is  quite  likely 
to  be  marred  by  deficiencies,  or  to  include  subordinate  elements 
which  would  better  be  left  out.     The  possibility  of  a  conclusive 


THE  MORAL  SELF  313 

speculative  treatment  of  this  Ideal  will  come  before  us  for  dis- 
cussion later  on.  But  we  wish  now  to  call  attention  to  the  truth 
that  the  very  attempt  to  form  any  ideal  of  conduct  in  so  com- 
prehensive and  loftly  a  fashion,  and  to  place  the  ideal  upon 
a  basis  of  experience,  while  admitting  the  necessity  for  trust- 
ing the  better  sentiments  and  the  artistic  imagination,  marks 
a  high  stage  in  the  moral  evolution  of  mankind. 

The  Moral  Ideal  is  itself  the  subject  of  evolution, — neces- 
sarily so;  for  it  is  the  mental  construct  of  the  Moral  Self,  and 
therefore  dependent  for  its  very  excellence  upon  the  stage  of 
its  own  moral  development  which  the  constructive  mind  has 
reached.  And  moral  development  here  includes  all  kinds  of 
development;  for  they  are  all  dependent  in  a  measure  upon 
man's  own  conduct;  and  man's  conduct  is  the  sphere  of 
morality. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  MORALLY  GOOD:    ITS  KINDS   (THE  VIRTUES)    AND 
ITS  UNITY 

The  intimations  which  were  hrouglit  forward  at  the  close 
of  the  last  chapter  require  to  be  further  explained  and  defended. 
To  accomplish  this  end,  two  lines  of  investigation  need  to  be 
pursued.  One  of  these  consists  in  the  study  of  the  evolution 
of  moral  judgments  as  embodied  in  certain  conceptions  and 
principles  which  are  esteemed  to  be  of  a  more  or  less  ex- 
tended, if  not  quite  universal,  application.  The  other  subjects 
these  same  conceptions  and  principles  to  a  speculative  process  in 
which  their  real  significance  is  made  clear,  and  the  basis  in 
Eeality  on  which  they  repose  is  disclosed.  Only  in  this  way 
can  philosophy  decide  upon  the  place  and  value  of  moral  ideals 
in  the  system  of  nature,  or  as  essential  "  moments "  in  the 
Being  of  the  World.  For  philosophy  insists  upon  asking  ques- 
tions which  the  so-called  science  of  ethics,  whether  pursued  by 
the  methods  of  descriptive  history  or  from  the  evolutionary 
and  explanatory  points  of  view,  cannot  decide.  Whence,  in 
the  last  analysis  come  the  sanctions  and  the  ideals  of  man's 
unfolding  moral  life;  and  is  not  the  Universe  itself  ethical  to 
the  core? 

When  wo  compare  the  development  of  moral  judgments,  as 
apjilied  lo  forms  of  external  conduct,  with  tlie  development  of 
moral  judgment  as  applied  to  typical  forms  of  the  inner  life, 
we  note  a  marked  difference  in  the  results.  There  is  far  greater 
variety  in  customs,  as  judged  from  the  ethical  point  of  view, 
than  in  the  motives,  or  conscious  states  of  emotion,  desire,  and 
intention,  out  of  which  actions  are  supposed  nuiterially  to 
spring.  That  the  morally  progressive  part  of  the  race  has 
evolved  a  fairly   consistent  and  notably  uniform   doctrine   of 

314 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  315 

the  virtues  is  a  historical  fact.  And  so  far  as  the  development 
can  be  traced  backward,  it  is  found  that  this  doctrine,  while 
placing  greatly  different  degrees  of  emphasis  upon  the  relative 
importance  of  particular  virtues,  has  remained  throughout  es- 
sentially the  same.  No  truly  good  man,  no  really  bad  man, 
would  behave  to-day  in  England  or  America  as  he  would  have 
behaved  in  ancient  Egypt  or  Babylon.  But  the  character  of 
the  good,  or  of  the  bad  man,  if  it  could  reveal  itself  to  the 
social  moral  consciousness  as  being  what  it  really  is,  would  be 
in  many  respects  essentially  the  same  to  be  approved  or  disap- 
proved, in  all  places  and  all  times.  The  Andaman  Islanders, 
the  native  Australians,  the  Zulus,  know  a  good  man  and  com- 
mend him,  when  they  understand  him;  and  the  Christian  mis- 
sionary recognizes  in  them  the  same  virtues,  however  different 
the  customary  ways  of  expressing  them,  which  he  is  striving 
to  cultivate  in  himself. 

This  accepted  practical  doctrine  of  the  virtuous  life  is,  how- 
ever, neither  self-conscious  nor  scholastic.  It  is  a  practical 
attitude  toward  a  rather  indiscriminate  lot  of  personal  char- 
acteristics, rather  than  a  rational  appreciation  of  an  idea  which 
includes  them  all.  It  is  an  unreasoned  view  of  many  virtues 
(or  their  opposites),  rather  than  a  rational  appreciation  of  the 
essential  character  of  virtue.  What  is  the  "  essence  " — or  real 
nature — of  Virtue?  is  the  question  which  we  are  about  to  raise. 

It  would  doubtless  facilitate  inquiry  if  there  were  some  uni- 
versally accepted  classification  of  the  virtues.  But  there  is 
none.  The  classification  most  favored  by  the  advocates  of  a 
purely  evolutionary  and  utilitarian  theory  of  ethics — into  ego- 
istic and  'altruistic — is  both  inadequate  and  misleading.  In 
searching  for  some  germ  of  virtuous  feeling,  which  nominally 
belongs  to  human  nature,  it  is  customary  to  find  it  in  those 
emotional  impulses  which  may  be  summarized  under  the  name 
"  Sympathy/'  Now  it  is  true  that  men  could  not  develope 
socially,  and  so  could  not  develope  morally, — or,  for  that  matter, 
be  moral  at  all, — without  a  large  equipment  of  feelings  which 


316  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

may  be  grouped  under  this  general  term.  And,  indeed,  most  of 
tlie  lower  animals  manifest  similar  forms  of  social  impulses. 
There  is,  however,  no  one  form  of  sympathy;  there  are  many 
sympathies.  There  are  as  many  as  there  are  forms  of  feeling 
which  are  specific, — feelings  of  kinsliip,  or  "  of  the  kind." 
Anger,  jealousy,  fear,  love,  hate,  pride,  shame,  ambition,  esteem, 
etc. — may  all  be  either  egoistic  or  altruistic,  according  to  the 
occasion  which  calls  them  forth,  or  the  object  toward  which 
they  are  directed.  It  would  even  be  not  wholly  improper  to 
say  that  the  same  exercises  of  feeling  are  both  egoistic  and 
altruistic  in  the  same  individual,  and  at  the  same  time.  Of 
every  Self  it  is  inevitably  true  that  a  large  part  of  his  Self  is 
a  social  Self.  The  Ego  does  not  exist  as  separable,  in  idea  or 
in  action,  wholly  from  every  Alter.  A  man's  wife,  children, 
friends,  enemies,  town,  tribe,  country,  are  "others";  but  at 
the  same  time  they  are  "  his  own." 

There  are  also  certain  sympathetic  feelings,  and  altruistic 
actions  flowing  from  such  feelings,  which  are  not  only  morally 
weak  but  positively  immoral.  While  there  are  some  of  the  vir- 
tues, such  as  courage,  fidelity,  and  steadfastness,  which  are 
more  fundamental  and  essential  for  the  earlier  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  and  the  race,  than  is  the  virtue  of  so- 
called  "  benevolence." 

We  must  then  return  to  the  point  of  starting  for  our  investi- 
gation into  the  essential  nature  of  virtue,  with  these  two  con- 
victions. There  is  rather  an  indefinite  number  of  virtues  (as  so 
judged  by  the  consent  of  the  race)  ;  and  they  admit  of  various 
forms  of  classification ;  but  the  "  virtuousness  "  which  is  com- 
mon to  them  all  has  its  essential  quality  made  ksown,  only 
when  it  can  be  discovered,  what  is  the  ideal  standard  with  which 
they  are  to  be  compared. 

For  purposes  of  convenience  chiefly,  although  also  on  account 
of  the  theoretical  suggestions  which  will  be  found  to  be  con- 
cealed in  it,  we  adopt  what  we  will  call  the  "  psychological  " 
classification  of  the  virtues.    But  the  term  must  not  be  over- 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  317 

pressed,  and  so  misunderstood.  This  division  recognizes  three 
main  classes  of  virtues:  (1)  virtues  of  the  will;  (2)  virtues  of 
the  intellect;  (3)  virtues  of  feeling.  But  by  this  it  is  not  meant 
to  imply  either  that  one  can  be  virtuous  in  any  other  manner  or 
degree  with  the  use  of  one  so-called  faculty  only;  or  that  the 
essential  characteristics  of  any  particular  virtue  do  not  require 
the  co-operation  of  all  the  so-called  faculties.  Indeed,  a  so- 
called  "  faculty-theory  "  of  the  mind  cannot  be  held  in  any  such 
way  as  to  make  their  separate  action  possible,  not  to  say  virtu- 
ous. It  is  simple  matter  of  fact,  however,  that  some  of  those 
personal  characteristics  which  the  race  has,  with  a  practically 
uniform  consent,  regarded  as  morally  approbated  and  merito- 
rious, emphasize  self-control;  others  emphasize  qualities  of 
judgment;  still  others  emphasize  the  kindly  feelings,  or  quali- 
ties of  the  heart,  rather  than  of  the  intellect  or  will.  This 
historical  fact  does  something  more  than  merely  assist  in  the 
work  of  classifying  the  virtues.  It  plainly  indicates  what  is  the 
"  essence  "  of  virtue, — the  virtuousness  which  makes  virtuous 
all  the  virtues.  And  this  is  the  problem  which  philosophy 
aims  to  solve. 

The  principal  virtues  of  the  Will,  the  virtues  that  emphasize 
self-control,  are  Courage,  Temperance,  and  Constancy.  "  Cour- 
age is  self-control  in  the  presence  of  any  form  of  temptation 
to  fear;  it  is  strength  of  purpose  resisting  the  impulse  to  yield 
to  cowardice.  Temperance  is  self-control  in  the  presence  of 
eyery  impulse  to  gratification  of  the  appetites  and  desires;  it 
is  strength  of  purpose  to  resist  the  seductions  of  the  pleasure- 
giving  and  pleasure-promising  activities.  Constancy  is  per- 
sistence in  self-control  in  spite  of  resistance  or  obstacles  to  be 
overcome;  it  is  strength  of  purpose  triumphing  over  all  im- 
pulses to  turn  aside  from  the  chosen  course  of  conduct,  from 
the  repeated  if  even  laborious  use  of  means  to  reach  the  desired 
end.  The  vices  or  faults  opposed  to  these  virtues  are  cowardice, 
licentiousness  or  profligacy,  and  fickleness  or  sloth."  He  who 
has  these  virtues  in  large  measure  is  a  man  to  be  admired 


318  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

from  the  ethical  point  of  view  as  a  man  of  "  good  will,"  in  the 
more  appropriate  but  restricted  meaning  of  the  term.  For  he 
is  tlie  man  who  has  the  will  of  a  self-determining  spirit;  and 
be  he  Satan  or  Michael,  so  far  forth,  he  both  naturally  and 
ralionall}^  calls  for  ethical  and  a^sthetical  admiration.  Of  such 
stuir  are  heroes  made.  It  is  such  a  brave,  enduring,  and  loyal 
mind,  whom  savages  admire  and  of  whom  the  cultured  poet 
sings : 

"  Languor  Is   not  in  your  heart, 
Weakness  is  not  in  your  word. 
Weariness  not  on  your  brow." 

In  all  emergencies,  in  all  stages  and  conditions  of  civilization, 
he  is  the  man  of  the  hour.  And  these  are  virtues,  none  the  less 
fundamental  and  indispensable,  if  less  openly  and  ferociously 
dis])laYed,  at  the  present  time. 

The  principal  virtues  of  the  Judgment  are  Wisdom,  Just- 
ness, and  Trueness.  In  order  that  the  term  "  virtues  of  the 
judiTinent"  may  be  appropriately  and  usefully  employed,  these 
psychological  trutlis  which  concern  its  nature  must  be  kept  in 
mind.  Judging  is  no  passive  getting  together  of  ideas,  whether 
memory-images  or  products  of  phantasy,  under  the  laws  of 
association.  Judging  is  a  species  of  conduct.  /  j^idge;  and 
therefore  I  am,  in  some  sort,  responsible  for  my  judgment. 
Since  the  part  which  judgment  takes  in  the  virtuous  life,  is 
essential  and  integral,  the  truly  good  man  must  be  a  num  of 
good  judgment.  When  judgment  applies  to  matters  of  con- 
duct, either  in  deciding  whether  they  should  be,  or  should  not 
be,  from  the  moral  point  of  view,  or  whether,  having  been,  they 
sliould  or  should  not  be  approbated  and  "  rewarded  accord- 
ingly " ;  then  the  word  "  good,"  as  applied  to  judgment,  has 
something  more  than  a  merely  logical  significance. 

Wisdom  is  opposed  to  that  frivolity  of  which  Humboldt  said 
that  it  "undermines  all  morality  and  permits  no  deep  thought 
or  pure  feeling  to  germinate;  in  a  frivolous  soul  nothing  can 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  319 

emanate  from  principle,  and  sacrifice  and  self-conquest  are  out 
of  the  question."'  The  most  important  respects  in  which  that 
moral  exercise  of  the  judgment  which  is  called  the  virtue  of 
wisdom  takes  place  are  the  following:  (1)  the  estimate  of 
ends,  with  a  view  to  determine  their  relative  worth;  (2)  the 
estinuite  of  means,  with  a  view  to  determine  their  relative 
effectiveness  for  the  realization  of  ends;  and  (3)  the  appre- 
ciation of  those  limitations  which,  belong  to  the  natural  and 
social  environment  of  man.  The  supreme  exhibition  of  the 
virtue  of  wisdom  is,  therefore,  given  when  those  ends  are  chosen 
which  have  the  highest  value  as  measured  by  the  standard  of 
the  moral  ideal ;  and  wlien  such  means  are  adopted  as  are  best 
worthy  and  most  effective  toward  reaching  these  ideal  ends, 
under  the  actual  limitations,  physical  and  social,  of  human  life. 
From  this  virtue  flow  all  the  prudential  virtues,  but  especially 
that  most  difficult  form  of  wisdom  for  heroic  and  aspiring  souls, 
— the  virtue  of  Resignation  when  human  wills  come  into  col- 
lision with  the  Will  of  Nature  in  the  large. 

Of  all  human  virtues,  Justness  is  perhaps  most  difficult  and 
at  the  same  time  highly  prized  by  an  enlightened  moral  con- 
sciousness as  developed  in  social  relations.  The  way  that  this 
ethical  exercise  of  judgment  spreads  over  every  form  of  con- 
duct under  social  conditions  led  Aristotle  to  distinguish  a 
kind  of  "  general  justice "  which  included  the  essence  of  all 
virtuousness.  Of  justice  so'  defined  he  says :  "  It  is  complete 
virtue,  although  not  complete  in  an  absolute  sense,  but  in  rela- 
tion to  one's  neighbor."  This  "  is  not  a  part  of  virtue  but 
the  whole  of  virtue."  Perfect  justice,  however,  is  not  possible 
in  a  society  composed  of  members  of  limited  knowledge  with 
respect  to  each  others'  character  and  deserts;  and  with  both 
limited  knowledge  and  power  so  far  as  the  environment  and  the 
consequences  of  conduct  are  concerned.  By  this  virtue,  then, 
we  can  only  understand  the  "  voluntary  judgment  which  ap- 
portions to  men  their  due  share  of  the  goods  and  evils  of  life, 
so  far  as  this  is  dependent  upon  human  conduct" 


320  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

It  has  already  been  indicated  that,  as  there  is  a  higher  wis- 
dom, so  there  is  a  higlier  justness.  This  higher  justness  judges 
the  customs  and  laws  of  society  themselves  and  condemns  or 
approves  them  in  accordance  with  its  own  ideals.  In  its  prac- 
tice the  good  man  can  do  no  more  than  cherish  the  spirit  of 
fairness  and  a  high  estimate  of  the  worth  of  the  individual 
man;  inform  himself  as  to  the  means  by  which  the  existing 
inequalities  of  conditions  as  related  to  deserts  may  best  be 
improved;  and  fuse  these  elements  of  justness  into  judgment, 
whenever  any  of  the  many  concrete  questions  come  before  the 
bar  of  his  moral  reason  for  adjustment.  For  as  Plato  long  ago 
taught,  the  attempt  to  deal  with  life's  labors  and  acquisitions 
in  a  way  to  correspond  with  an  ideal,  concerns  "  not  the  outward 
man  but  the  inward,  which  is  the  true  Self  and  concernment  of 
a  man  "  (Eepublic,  443). 

Trueness,  by  which  is  to  be  understood  something  far  more 
than  mere  truth-telling — the  being  true,  in  conduct  and  char- 
acter— may  be  esteemed  the  one  indispensable  condition  of  all 
virtuousness,  the  core  of  all  right  and  dutiful  character.  This 
virtue  might  be  called  "  loyalty  to  reality,"  or  fidelity,  as 
well.  Yet  the  extreme  views  of  the  relativity  and  evolutionary 
character  of  all  the  virtues  have  selected  this  one,  with  an  un- 
common delight,  as  proof  obvious  and  positive  of  their  conten- 
tions. For  do  not  lies  abound  amongst  all  races  that  are  low 
in  the  scale  of  civilization ;  and  does  it  not  require  the  experi- 
ences of  a  sort  of  mercantile  profit  to  make  truthfulness  es- 
teemed as  a  virtue  at  all?  Now  it  is  true  that  this  virtue,  on 
account  of  those  physical  and  social  conditions  which  prevail 
in  all  forms  of  civilization,  and  especially  in  the  lower  and 
lowest  forms,  is  particularly  difficult  both  of  appreciation  at 
its  true  value,  and  also  of  habitual  practice.  But  this  is  not 
because  truthfulness  is  not  esteemed  a  virtue  by  men  gener- 
ally. Savages  agree  with  Aristotle :  "  Falsehood  is  in-itself 
base  and  censurable;  truth  is  noble  and  laudable." 

"  The  liar  is  short-lived,"  says  the  Arabian  proverb.     "  Lies, 


I 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  321 

though  many,  will  be  caught  by  Truth,"  is  the  rude  Wolofs 
way  of  expressing  the  general  experience.  The  natives  of 
Afghanistan  and  of  India  may  be  nearly  all  liars;  but  "the 
career  of  falsehood  is  short " — so  runs  the  maxim  of  the  former; 
and  truthfulness  and  courage  are  essential  to  the  good  man, 
according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Eig  Veda.  Even  the  base 
lago  called  the  world  "  monstrous/'  in  which  "  to  be  direct 
and  honest  is  not  safe."  And  in  an  age  and  country  like  our 
own,  where  deceit  and  lying,  born  of  avarice,  cowardice,  and 
political  ambition,  are  so  wide-spreading;  trueness,  in  the 
higher  meaning  of  the  word,  is  esteemed  one  of  the  most  un- 
qualified of  the  virtues.  The  conclusion  which  is  justified 
by  the  philosophy  of  conduct,  when  guided  by  reflection  upon 
the  data  of  man's  moral  development,  is  this :  He  has  most 
perfectly  the  virtue  of  trueness  who  most  painstakingly  and 
sincerely  adjusts  his  judgment  to  the  realities  that  have  most  of 
value  in  the  relation  to  the  supreme  ends  of  the  virtuous  life. 
And  this  requires  not  only  the  refusal  to  be  influenced  by 
cowardice,  greed,  love  of  notoriety,  and  other  vices  which  are 
prolific  breeders  of  lies,  but  also  a  firm  resistance  of  the  judg- 
ment to  the  influences  of  thoughtlessness,  dogmatism,  and  par- 
tisanship. 

Those  virtues  which  we  have  ventured  to  call  Virtues  of  the 
Heart  arise  more  spontaneously  from  the  kindly  feelings  with 
which  human  nature  is  endowed,  and  which  are  as  essentially 
natural  and  normal,  and  as  indispensable  even  to  the  begin- 
nings of  human  society,  as  are  any  of  the  most  imperative  of 
the  self-seeking  and  self-protective  appetites  and  passions.  The 
shallow  view,  which  at  one  time  prevailed,  that  human  nature 
is  essentially  selfish  and  that  even  the  most  altruistic  of  the 
feelings  and  kindly  of  actions  are  only  more  subtle  and  con- 
cealed forms  of  egoism,  may  now  be  dismissed  without  further 
comment.  ]\Iany  forms  of  sympathy  are  specific  with  man,  as 
they  are  with  all  the  higher  species  of  animals.  In  man's  case 
they  have  the  human  and  rational  qualifications  and  applica- 


322  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tioDs  which  belong  to  his  entire  life,  whether  regarded  from 
within  or  from  without.  These  virtues  are,  therefore,  not  lack- 
ing among  savages  and  primitive  men.  Their  characteristics 
in  such  cases  are,  however,  derived  from  their  limitations. 
"Primitive  man,"  says  Wundt  (Ethics,  I,  p.  263f.),  "can  be 
sympatlietic,  helpful,  even  self-sacrificing,  when  his  comrade  is 
in  danger:  he  is  incapable  of  an  action  which  will  not  benefit 
some  one  of  his  acquaintances,  still  more  of  conduct  which  does 
not  aim  to  assist  any  individual  whatever."  The  active  well- 
wishing  toward  all  men,  with  a  consistent  self-sacrifice  in  their 
behalf,  "  without  regard  to  difference  of  class  or  race,"  is  in- 
deed the  highest  form  of  this  virtue.  But  it  is  only  under  the 
influences  of  religion  that  mankind  have  in  a  measure  risen 
to  this  moral  judgment,  and  to  a  poor  form  of  the  practice 
recommended  by  such  judgment.  The  Bhagavad  Gita,  and  cer- 
tain writings  of  Buddhism,  as  well  as  of  ancient  philosophy, 
have  indeed  recognized  and  to  some  degree  cultivated  this 
universal  feeling  of  brotherly  kindness.  But  the  writer  just 
quoted  is  essentially  true  to  the  facts  of  history  when  he 
affirms  (Ethics,  I,  p.  291)  :  "Humanity  in  the  highest  sense 
was  brought  into  the  world  by  Christianity."  And  "  humanity 
in  this  highest  sense  "  is  "  the  sacrifice  of  self  for  others  with- 
out regard  to  difference  of  class  or  race." 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  character  of  the  man  whom  the  moral 
verdict  of  the  race  agrees  to  call  "  good."  A  man  of  self- 
control — courageous,  temperate,  constant;  a  man  in  judgment, 
wise,  just,  and  loyal  to  truth;  a  man  of  large  sympathies,  of  a 
kind  and  unselfish  heart.  But  these  are  many  virtues;  and 
wherein  does  their  unity  consist?  This  is  the  manifoldness  of 
the  moral  life;  in  what  does  the  essential  distinction  between 
the  goodness  of  these  attributes  of  it,  and  the  badness  of  their 
opposites,  make  itself  known  and  appreciated  at  its  true  worth  ? 
This  search  for  an  ethically  unifying  conception  or  principle 
is  further  complicated  by  such  facts  as  the  following:  The 
very  virtues  seem  to  be  called  forth  under  diverse  conditions; 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  333 

so  that  at  one  time  one  of  them,  and  at  another  time  another 
of  them,  must  he  ^elected  to  afford  the  appropriate  motive  for 
the  action  which  shall  fit  the  circumstances  in  a  morally  ap- 
propriate way.  Indeed,  the  most  important  and  conspicuous 
of  the  virtues  seem,  of  their  very  nature,  driven  into  a  con- 
flict with  one  another.  How  shall  a  man  be  always  courageous 
and  just,  and  yet  always  pitiful  and  kind?  How  shall  he  be 
wise  and  at  the  same  time  wholly  loyal  to  what  is  true  ?  In  this 
particular,  concrete  case,  will  it  be  more  wise  to  be  courageous 
and  tell  the  truth,  than  to  keep  silence  even  when  it  is  difficult 
not  to  recognize  a  certain  degree  of  cowardice  as  a  motive  to 
silence  ?  In  actually  being  good,  in  the  real  life  which  aims  at 
the  ideal  of  virtuousness,  the  solution  of  such  differences  of 
solicitation  and  conflicts  of  equally  honorable  motives,  is  a 
ceaseless  trial.  But  the  teleology,  or  practical  final  purpose, 
of  moral  experience  is  not  difficult  to  discover.  It  is  in  the 
trial,  and  in  overcoming  its  difficulties,  and  in  solving  its  prob- 
lems, that  moral  culture  essentially  consists.  The  essence  of 
being  good,  as  a  practical  affair,  consists  in  just  this  ceaseless 
striving  to  discover  what  particular  virtue  is  called  for,  on  each 
occasion;  and  in  doing  one's  best  to  answer  as  promptly  and 
fully  as  possible  to  the  demand. 

In  saying  this,  however,  we  have  only  proclaimed  the  truth, 
that  a  self-conscious  and  self-determined  effort  to  realize  a 
certain  ideal  is  the  essence  of  subjective  morality.  We  have 
only  suggested  a  clue  to,  but  have  not  fully  answered,  the 
problem :  What  principle  gives  unity  to  virtue  ?  In  what  does 
the  virtuousness  of  all  the  virtues  essentially  consist?  -In 
considering  this  problem  further — both  as  a  question  and  its 
answer — the  constitution  of  the  highest  and  most  productive 
forms  of  unification  must  be  borne  in  mind.  They  are  not 
after  the  type  of  that  hypothetical,  unchanging  and  rigid  atom, 
which  a  now  vanished  chemical  science  combined  in  order  to 
build  the  less  real  but  more  serviceable  unities  of  particular 
things.     Neither  are  they  logically  consistent,  complete,  and 


324  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ready-made  systems  of  elements.  They  are  rather  tlie  result- 
ants of  many  co-operating  and  conflicting  forces,  which  act  and 
react  for  the  development  of  some  form  of  life  that  aims  at 
some  kind  of  an  ideal.  They  are  growths,  organisms;  and  the 
supreme  example  of  a  real  unity  is  that  achieved  by  the  mind 
itself  as  a  result  of  its  own  self-conscious  and  self-determining 
activity.  As  I  make  myself  o??^  Self  by  self-controlled  thin!.:: 
feeling,  and  action  according  to  a  plan;  so  I  make  myself  one 
virtuous  Self  by  the  persistent  effort  to  conform  thinking,  feel- 
ing, and  action,  as  species  of  conduct,  to  an  ideal  of  conduct. 

"  There  are  two  forms,  closely  allied  but  by  no  means  identi- 
cal, which  have  been  taken  by  the  customary  attempts  at  unify- 
ing the  particular  virtues.  Both  of  these  are  unsatisfactory  in 
their  method  as  well  as  in  their  result.  One  of  them  con- 
sists in  selecting  some  single  feature  or  aspect  of  conduct,  and 
then  identifying  the  virtuous  or  vicious  quality  of  all  conduct 
with  the  goodness  or  badness  of  this  one  feature  or  aspect. 
The  other  consists  in  selecting  some  one  of  the  more  important 
of  the  virtues,  and  then  identifying  with  it  the  entire  essential 
content  of  the  virtuous  life.  Thus  if  one  follows  the  trail  of 
the  first  argument  in  one's  search  after  the  unity  of  virtue,  one 
will  discover  the  virtuousness  of  virtue  to  consist  in  either  good- 
external  behavior,  or  in  good  motive,  or  in  good  intention.  But 
if  the  second  method  of  solving  the  problem  be  chosen,  then  it 
will  be  claimed  that  all  the  virtues  are,  in  the  last  analysis  and 
essentially  considered,  either  wisdom,  or  justice,  or  benevolence, 
or  some  other  one  among  them  all.  The  first  method  of  unify- 
ing the  particular  virtues  results  in  a  narrow  and  perverted 
notion  of  conduct,  as  conduct  has  already  been  described  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  opinions  and  practices  of  mankind.  The 
second  method  results  in  so  modifying  and  expanding  the  con- 
ception of  some  one  of  the  particular  virtues  as  that  it  loses  all 
its  concrete  and  valuable  particularity  in  a  vague  and  shadowy 
generalization  as  to  the  nature  of  virtue.  The  result  in  both 
cases    is    similar    to    that    obtained    by    treating    in    similar 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  325 

metlled  the  allied  phenomena  of  man's  religious  life.  Thus  in 
answer  to  tlie  question,  What  is  religion?  one  may  locate  its 
'  essence '  in  feeling,  or  dogma,  or  behavior ;  or  one  may  at- 
tempt the  answer  by  so  manipulating  some  one  religion  as  to 
include  under  it  all  *  true '  religions  and  exclude  all  other  re- 
ligions on  the  ground  of  their  being  '  false,' " 

The  one  essential  characteristic  of  virtue  cannot  be  found 
in  the  character  of  the  external  behavior;  the  science  of  ethics 
cannot  bring  about  a  unification  of  the  virtues  under  the  con- 
ception of  conformity  to  the  customs  and  rules  adopted  and 
practiced  by  society.  The  appeal  which  all  men  frequently 
make,  and  which  the  best  men  make  most  frequently  and  per- 
emptorily, away  from  these  customs  and  rules  to  something 
higher,  more  authoritative  and  more  spiritual,  shows  that  in 
fact  the  essential  quality  of  morality  is  not,  as  Locke  regarded 
it,  the  conformity  of  action  to  a  rule.  Neither  is  the  word 
Motive,  in  any  legitimate  meaning,  fitted  to  express  all  the 
characteristics  essential  to  every  form  of  virtue.  In  its  proper 
significance,  motive  is  any  desire,  impulse,  or  wish,  which  tends 
to  induce  a  definite  volition.  Good  motives,  in  the  ethical 
meaning  of  the  adjective,  become  then  such  impulses,  desires, 
or  wishes,  as  tend  to  induce  the  choice  of  good  or  virtuous 
action.  But  the  extreme  conclusion  that  the  desire,  or  wish, 
to  be  perfectly  virtuous  is  equivalent  to  being  perfectly  virtuous, 
is  shocking  to  the  moral  judgment.  Indeed,  good  motives  that 
are  not  "  backed  up  "  and  "  put  through  "  with  a  will  that  has 
courage  and  constancy  are  not  infrequently  characteristic  of 
the  most  weak  and  morally  unworthy  personalities.  And  as 
Aristotle  well  said :  "  If  the  purpose  is  to  be  all  it  should  be, 
both  the  calculation  or  the  reasoning  must  be  true,  and  the  de- 
sire must  be  right"  (ISTicom.  Ethics,  VI,  ii,  2). 

In  view  of  these  imperfections  of  the  other  terms,  the  word 
Intention  has  been  chosen  to  summarize  the  virtuous  qualities 
which  belong  in  common  to  all  the  particular  virtues.  And 
since  this  word  may  easily  be  made  to  include  more  or  less  of 


3,23  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

consideration  for  the  consequences  of  conduct,  and  of  choice  to 
realize  in  action  the  motives  which  are  apprehended  as  morally 
worthy,  good  intention  does  indeed  come  nearer  to  suggest- 
ing that  attitude  toward  life  in  which  the  virtuousness  of  the 
mind  essentially  consists.  If  under  good  intention  it  is  meant 
to  include  the  most  perfect  functioning  of  the  Moral  Self  as 
self-controlled  feeling,  judging,  and  acting,  in  the  interests  of 
its  Moral  Ideal,  good  intention  is  clearly  identical  with  the 
virtuousness  of  all  the  virtues.  The  man  of  perfectly  good  in- 
tentions would  be  so  far  as  that  particular  man  could  be,  the 
man  of  the  perfect  virtuous  life.  But  this  would  only  change 
titles  without  simplifying  the  subject.  The  forming  of  good 
intentions  is,  indeed,  often  the  only  way  of  virtue  under  the 
circumstances.  There  are,  however,  two  rather  important  ob- 
jections to  this  magnifying  of  words.  In  the  first  place,  the 
virtues  of  the  feelings,  or  so-called  heart  excellences,  seem  to 
lose  some  of  their  characteristic  moral  beauty  and  sweetness 
with  a  loss  of  spontaneity.  Simple  kindness,  sympathy  that  is 
not  too  much  strained  through  a '  close-webbed  net  of  moral 
criticism,  cannot  be  wholly  lacking  to  the  completely  virtuous 
Self.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  virtues  of  the  will, 
especially  the  virtue  of  constancy,  do  not  seem  reducible  to  good 
intentions,  even  when  this  phrase  is  most  liberally  interpreted. 
The  effort  to  unify  all  the  virtues  by  reducing  them  to  one 
all-embracing  or  all-absorbing  virtue,  is  even  less  successful 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct.  As  we 
have  seen,  Aristotle  chose  a  kind  of  general  justice  for  this 
purpose;  but  he  did  not  press  his  doctrine  to  an  extreme,  and 
did  not  consider  it  as  interfering  with  his  theory  that  the  real 
excellence  of  all  the  virtues  consists  in  their  lying  in  a  mean 
between  two  extremes.  Modern  ethics  has  selected  "  benevo- 
lence "  as  the  one  essential  and  all-inclusive  virtue.  And  join- 
ing itself  to  theology,  ethics  has  tried  to  summarize  all  the 
virtues  under  such  an  expression  as  "  The  Law  of  Love  and 
Love  as  a  Law,"  etc.     But  the  question  recurs  at  once :     Must 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  327 

not  this  benevolence,  or  love,  be  wise,  courageous,  constant, — in 
order  to  have  that  "  stability  and  substance  "  which,  as  Hegel 
declared,  "  constitute  the  key-note  of  character "  ?  To  this 
question  no  satisfactory  answer  is  given,  or  can  be  given,  with- 
out bringing  in  again  a  number  of  fundamental  conceptions 
which  do  not  fuse  well  with  the  conception  of  benevolence  as 
the  sole  inclusive  virtue.  Lotze,  for  example,  becomes  hopelessly 
confused  and  unintelligible  in  his  treatment  of  the  whole  sub- 
ject. This  usually  clear  thinker  tells  us  that  it  is  "  not  the 
effort  after  our  own,  but  only  that  for  the  production  of  an- 
other's felicity,  which  is  ethically  meritorious; — and,  accord- 
ingly, that  the  idea  of  benevolence  must  give  us  the  sole  su- 
preme principle  of  moral  conduct."  To  this  vague  sentence  it 
is  sufficient  to  reply  that  if  by  felicity  be  meant  happiness 
rather  than  moral  chaidcter,  then  the  effort  to  procure  it  for 
others  is  by  no  means  always  "  ethically  meritorious  " ;  but  if 
felicity  be  used  to  include,  and  to  exalt,  the  worth  of  moral 
character,  then  he  who  does  not  make  an  "  effort  after "  it 
for  himself,  is  the  very  opposite  of  "  ethically  meritorious." 
Expand  and  explain  our  terms  as  we  may,  we  cannot  escape  the 
truth:  The  idea  of  rational  measure  is  required  as  an  added 
ethical  qualification  in  connection  with  benevolence  itself.  This 
"  rational  measure  "  is  the  key  to  the  virtue  of  wisdom  which 
Plato  exalted  to  the  place  of  supremacy:  while  in  the  ethical 
theory  of  the  Old  Japan,  benevolence,  justice,  and  wisdom  all 
yield  the  crown  to  the  consummate  virtue  of  Fidelity. 

In  fine,  the  argument  always  seems  to  come  circling  round 
to  the  point  of  starting  again.  Benevolence  is  indeed  an  im- 
portant and  cardinal  virtue;  but  it  is  only  one  of  the  virtues, 
and  it  must  itself  be  supplemented  and  completed  by  the  others, 
by  constancy,  wisdom,  justness  and  trueness — if  ethics  is  to 
depict  in  its  perfection  the  Virtuous  Life. 

This  circle  in  the  argument,  however,  has  its  own  most  im- 
portant suggestion  to  make.  The  suggestion  is  this:  the  stu- 
dent of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  should  concentrate  his  regard 


328  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

upon  the  one  conception  corresponding  to  that  unitary  being 
about  which  the  circle  has  been  drawn.  This  is  the  being  of  the 
Moral  Self.  It  is  the  conception  of  such  a  being  in  which  we 
must  find  the  true  principle  for  the  unification  of  all  the 
virtues.  The  unity  of  the  virtues  corresponds  to  the  unity  of 
a  personality,  in  active  and  varied  relations  with  other  persons. 
This  is  a  unity  of  no  mechanical  or  merely  conceptual  sort; 
it  is  neither  like  the  unity  of  a  piece  of  mechanism  nor  like  the 
unity  which  the  process  of  logical  abstraction  prepares  in  order 
to  cover  an  entire  species  consisting  of  many  individuals.  One 
sheep  is  like  another,  although  one  may  be  white  and  another 
black,  one  witli  long  wool  and  one  with  short.  But  wisdom  is 
not  like  courage,  temperance  is  not  a  species  of  kindness,  and 
justness  and  trueness  are  not  to  be  reduced  to  benevolence.  This 
many-sided  being  called  man  is  the  virtuous  or  vicious  one; 
his  possible  virtues  and  vices  are  as  many  as  are  the  forms  of 
liis  action  that  are  subject  to  intelligent  control.  He  is  set  in 
society  as  the  encitement  and  environment  of  his  moral  develop- 
ment; and  his  social  relations  are  as  indefinite  in  number  as 
they  are  variable  in  kind. 

In  all  these  varying  relations,  and  on  all  these  many  sides, 
the  Moral  Self  is  seeking  many  different  forms  of  good,  and  is 
trying  to  escape  or  bravely  to  endure  many  different  forms  of 
evil.  In  all  this  search  and  effort  the  individual  man  is  only 
one  of  many,  a  unit  in  a  larger  social  multiplicity,  which  is 
itself  a  sort  of  unit  relatively  to  other  higher  unities.  No  one 
virtuous  quality  will  suffice  on  all  occasions,  or  for  the  satis- 
factory discharge  of  all  the  functions  belonging  to  these  differ- 
ing relations;  nor  can  any  man,  however  wise,  always  tell  which 
one  of  several  virtues  it  is  fitting  to  display. 

"  One  unifying  conception  of  great  significance  and  power  has, 
however,  already  been  attained.  All  the  discoverable  virtues 
are  partial  harmonies,  or  single  notes  accordant  with  the  Moral 
Ideal.  And  that  ideal  is  a  Self  living  the  Virtuous  Life  in 
social   relations  with  other  selves.     The  effort  to  realize  tWs 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  329 

ideal  furnishes  to  each  one  in  a  fragmentary  way  his  bit  of  the 
principle  of  unification  which,  so  far  as  it  is  adopted  and  ap- 
plied, tends  to  bring  his  own  inner  life,  at  any  rate,  into  the 
unity  of  a  harmonious  whole.  The  alleged  unity  of  virtue  thus 
becomes  the  fidelity  of  the  one  and  total  personality — the  uni- 
tary being  called  a  Moral  Self — to  the  Moral  Ideal.  But  this 
unity  is  subjective  and  lies  in  the  nature  of  moral  personality 
rather  than  in  the  nature  of  virtue — as  though  '  Virtue ' 
could  represent  anything  more  than  an  abstraction  from  char- 
acteristic tendencies  and  conscious  states  of  a  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  person.  For  any  further  objective  ground 
of  unity  we  must  look,  not  to  the  nature  of  virtue,  but  to  the 
nature  of  the  Universe  in  the  midst  of  which  the  development 
of  human  morality  takes  place." 

There  are  two  other  aspects  of  human  ethical  experience 
which  have  become  embodied  in  abstract  terms  that  seem  to 
give  morality  a  kind  of  unitary,  but  impersonal  character. 
These  words  are  Duty  and  Law.  Is  not  he  the  truly  good 
man  who  always  does  his  duty;  and  may  not,  therefore,  the 
doing  of  duty  be  said  to  be  the  very  essence  of  morality?  Or, 
what  more  can  perfect  goodness  require  of  the  man  who  aspires 
to  attain  it,  than  a  constant  and  unswerving  obedience  to  the 
moral  law?  But  on  examining  both  these  highly  abstract  con- 
ceptions we  find  ourselves  taken  again  over  the  same  ground 
of  facts  that  are  only  realized,  or  conceivable  as  possible  of 
realization,  through  the  development  of  a  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  Self.  Separate  from  personal  experiences, 
duty  and  law  have,  in  Reality,  no  ethical  meaning  at  all. 

The  significance  of  the  word  Duty  is  made  clear  by  reference 
to  these  two  sets  of  factors  which  are  obvious  and  important 
in  the  development  of  the  Moral  Self:  (1)  that  conduct  is  an 
obligation;  and  (2)  that  all  obligation  attaches  itself  of  neces- 
sity to  one  person  in  varied  social  relations  to  other  persons. 
Thus  certain  species  of  conduct,  including  the  inner  motives, 
intentions,  and  fixed  purposes,  since  they  are  enforced  by  the 


330  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

feeling  of  obligation,  are  regarded  as  dues,  or  debts,  to  others. 
It  is  right  that  they  should  be  performed;  and  this  rightness, 
as  dictated  and  enforced  by  moral  emotion,  becomes  the  basis 
for  a  doctrine  of  duties  and  of  rights.  But  there  are  duties 
many  and  diverse  and  difficult  to  discern;  as  many  as  there 
are  other  persons  with  whom  the  individual  comes  into  social 
relations;  as  diverse  as  are  these  social  relations;  and  as  diffi- 
cult as  human  temptations,  human  ignorance,  or  human  lim- 
itations of  means  and  opportunity  can  make  them  to  be.  The 
conception  of  duty,  therefore,  is  an  abstraction  from  that  feel- 
ing of  oughtness  which  accompanies  all  man's  judgments  and 
actions  of  an  ethico-social  character.  When,  then,  Kant  apos- 
trophizes the  conception :  "  Duty !  Thou  sublime  and  mighty 
name " ;  or  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  and  others  who  write  about 
ethical  subjects  with  appropriate  emotional  warmth,  indulge 
themselves  in  similar  figures  of  speech ;  it  is  really  the  perfectly 
dutiful  person,  if  such  could  be  found,  whom  they  make  the 
object  of  their  admiration  and  their  worship.  As  Kant  him- 
self elsewhere  puts  the  truth  in  plain  language:  all  men  natu- 
rally ascribe  a  certain  "  dignity  and  sublimity  to  the  person 
who  fulfils  all  his  duties."  For  the  reality  of  such  a  life  is 
glorified  by  the  ideal  to  which  it  corresponds. 

■  The  manner  in  which  the  word  Law  becomes  in  matters  of 
morality,  converted  into  a  sort  of  adorable  fetish,  is  even  more 
obvious.  This  use  of  the  word  is  after  the  fashion  so  prevalent 
among  the  physical '  and  natural  sciences  of  the  day.  Having 
discovered,  as  they  suppose,  the  unchanging  natures  and  in- 
variable modes  of  the  behavior  of  things,  and  being  able  to  give 
them  an  approximately  accurate  mathematical  statement  so 
far  only  as  their  quantitative  relations  are  concerned,  they 
proceed  to  personify  and  deify  the  formula.  Obedience  to  the 
"  laws  of  nature  "  seems  to  impart  a  dignity  even  to  material 
substances  which  they  could  not  have,  if  they  were  only  con- 
sidered as  just  naturally  doing  what  they  chose  to  do.  But 
"  laws  of  nature  "  are  not  entities,  or  compelling  forces  which 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  331 

exist  over  and  above,  or  outside  of,  real  things.  So  entrancing 
does  the  conception  of  law  become,  and  so  shadowy  and  inef- 
fective the  conception  of  a  consciously  followed  ideal,  that  the 
heart  of  science  aches  to  reduce  the  Moral  Self  to  a  thing-like 
existence,  under  the  reign  of  inexorable  law.  But  this  will  not 
do.  For  in  fact,  it  is  not  the  law  that  rules  over  the  Self ; 
it  is  the  Self  that  malces  its  own  law  hy  following,  or  refusing 
to  follow,  the  moral  ideal.  And  this  ideal  is  not  the  bare 
keeping  of  an  impersonal  law.  The  good  man  is  not  the  man 
who  is  "  reigned  over  "  from  the  outside.  The  good  man  is  he 
who  makes  the  ideal  of  a  perfect  Self,  living  in  those  relations 
with  other  selves  which  are  fixed  by  his  physical  and  social 
environment,  the  effectively  controlling  thing  in  all  his  con- 
duct. And  when  the  two  laws — the  vital  impulses  of  appetite, 
passion,  affection,  desire,  ambition,  etc.,  and  the  mild  but 
superior  satisfactions  of  the  idea — contend  within  him,  his 
self-conscious,  self-determining  mind  chooses  the  latter  of  the 
two. 

How,  then,  shall  this  manner  of  speech  be  taken  out  of  the 
realm  of  poetry  and  myth  and  given  the  garb  of  scientific 
truth  ?  It  seems  to  us  that  only  one  way  is  possible.  The  ideal 
of  duty-doing,  which  is  a  mere  abstraction  until  it  is  trans- 
lated into  terms  of  personal  experience  and  personal  char- 
acter, is  really  the  ideal  of  a  Moral  Self  who  is  perfectly  ad- 
justed, by  his  own  response  to  the  feeling  of  obligation,  to 
all  other  moral  selves  in  the  various  social  relations  of  human 
life.  What,  then,  is  the  whole  duty  of  man?  It  is  the  con- 
stant, courageous,  wise,  and  loving  devotion  of  one's  powers  to 
the  realization  of  this  Ideal.  Positively  expressed  in  terms 
of  religion,  the  exhortation  which  sets  before  man  his  whole 
duty  is  this :  "  Be  ye  therefore  perfect  even  as  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect."  Negatively  expressed,  and  as 
contradicting  all  the  impulses,  endeavors,  and  ideals  which 
lie  in  different  directions,  human  ethical  experience  may  be 
summed  up  in  these  closing  words  of  Tourgueneff's  "  Faust  " : 


332  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  Not  the  fulfillment  of  cherished  dreams  and  aspirations,  how- 
ever lofty  they  may  be — the  fulfillment  of  duty,  that  is  what 
must  be  the  care  of  man.  Without  laying  on  himself  chains, 
the  iron  chains  of  duty,  he  cannot  reach  without  a  fall  the  end 
of  his  career.  But  in  youth  we  think — the  freer  the  better, 
the  farther  one  will  get.  Youth  may  be  excused  for  think- 
ing so,  but  it  is  shameful  to  delude  one's  self  when  the  stern 
face  of  truth  has  looked  one  in  the  eyes  at  last." 

Closely  connected  with  the  conception  of  duty  as  an  obli- 
gation upon  impulse  which  is  felt  like  "  iron  chains "  is  the 
conception  of  moral  law  in  its  origin  and  development.  On 
this  subject  the  analysis  of  moral  consciousness  confirms  what 
an  historical  study  of  moral  development  suggests :  only  at  a 
certain  stage  in  his  progress  does  man  (the  individual  and — 
in  a  somewhat  figurative  way  we  may  say — the  race)  find 
himself  face  to  face  with  this  legal  conception  of  morality. 
It  is  indeed  doubtful  whether  any  distinct  epoch  in  ethical 
evolution  is  to  be  discerned  "  when  the  idea  of  obligation 
held  in  the  general  consciousness  has  been  taken  by  the  obli- 
gatory norm  of  law."  The  rise  and  growth  of  the  thought 
that  the  pursuit  of  the  Virtuous  Life  may  properly  be  con- 
ceived of  as  obedience  to  a  universal  code  has  been  natural  and 
yet  manifold  in  character,  and  oftentimes  subtle  and  chiefly 
concealed.  Especially  is  this  true  of  that  exceedingly  vague  and 
intangible  conception  which  undertakes  to  express  itself  in 
such  phrases  as  "a  moral  law,"  or  "the  Moral  Law."  Laws, 
themselves  impersonal,  which  are  concrete  enactments  regulat- 
ing the  relations  of  persons,  and  which  owe  their  origin  to  the 
action  of  persons,  can  be  understood.  Laws  that  have  only 
the  significance  of  the  more  or  less  regular  observed  modes  of 
the  behavior  of  impersonal  things,  are  prima  facie  intelligible; 
even  if  we  cannot  understand  their  source.  But  what  can  be 
meant  by  the  Moral  Law,  if  all  personality,  all  Selfhood,  is 
to  be  left  out  of  the  account  which  etliics  attempts  to  render 
of  its  origin,  its  validity,  and  the  enforcement  of  its  penalties? 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  333 

In  their  effort  to  understand  the  origin  and  nature  of  such 
a  mental  construction  as  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  moral 
law,  writers  on  ethics  are  found  shifting  their  points  of  view 
in  the  fashion  against  which  warning  has  been  already  repeat- 
edly uttered.  That  is  to  say,  these  writers  take  at  one  mo- 
ment the  subjective,  or  plainly  personal  point  of  view;  and 
at  the  next  moment  they  are  found  stationed  at  the  more  ob- 
jective and  tentatively  impersonal  point  of  view.  We  say 
"  tentatively  impersonal  " ;  for  no  point  of  view  from  which 
to  regard  any  ethical  conception  can  possibly  be  more  than 
apparently  and  momentarily  (for  the  sake  of  the  argument, 
as  it  were)  separated  from  considerations  that  are  realizable 
only  in  the  conditions  and  social  relations  of  moral  and  per- 
sonal beings. 

Subjectively  regarded,  the  conception  of  Moral  Law  is  the 
conscious  apprehension  of  a  definite  rule  or  maxim,  adapted  to 
regulate  conduct,  which  actually  excites  some  person's  feel- 
ings of  obligation,  approbation,  and  merit,  and  which  actually 
offers  a  mandate  to  some  person's  will.  Subjectively  consid- 
ered, also,  the  very  formation  of  this  conception  implies  a 
work  of  learning  such  rules  or  maxims  from  other  persons; 
or  of  generalizing  them  for  one's  self  by  processes  of  observa- 
tion. The  primary  data  for  the  formation  of  such  a  law  are 
the  facts  which  have  already  been  discovered  by  our  analysis 
of  man's  moral  consciousness ;  they  are  the  "  I  think,"  "  I 
feel,"  "  I  desire,"  "  I  plan,"  etc., — all  of  them  psychoses, 
which  have  reference  to  forms  of  good  and  bad  conduct.  Ob- 
jectively regarded,  however,  the  so-called  moral  laws  are  cer- 
tain forms  of  conduct  that  have — by  whatever  historical  proc- 
esses and  in  accordance  with  whatever  true  or  false  traditions 
— become  actually  embodied  in  customs,  maxims,  statutes,  or 
other  institutions;  they  are  the  commonly  accepted  formulas 
which  assume  the  right  to  regulate  human  behavior  under  a 
great  variety  of  conditions  and  relations.  But  such  laws,  thus 
objeotiveiy    and    impersonally   regarded,   cannot  be   considered 


334  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

as  truly  moral  laws,  without  a  return  to  the  personal  and  sub- 
jective point  of  view.  And  here  the  simple  and  ultimate  fact 
is  that  they  appear  before  the  individual  consciousness  as 
binding;  they  actually  arouse  the  feeling  of  obligation,  and 
offer  a  mandate,  an  imperative  to  the  will.  Their  being  at 
all,  that  is  to  say,  consists  in  the  recognition  which  they  ob- 
tain in  the  minds  of  personal  beings. 

Moral  laws  imply,  then,  law-giving  moral  consciousness, 
which  is  their  only  actual  and,  indeed,  only  conceivable,  source. 
So  much  of  universality  as  they  can  attain  is  dependent  upon 
those  characteristics  of  moral  consciousness  which  belong  to 
human  nature  and  are  exercised  semper,  ubique,  et  ah  omni- 
bus.  So  much  of  objectivity  as  they  possess,  of  impersonality 
as  they  appear  to  have,  is  due  to  the  conditions  and  nature 
of  the  various  forms  of  social  organization.  But  social  or- 
ganization is  itself  a  product  of  morally  constituted  selves. 
In  all  such  social  organization  the  primary,  universally  present 
fact  is  found  to  be  this:  certain  ways  of  behavior  rather  than 
others  are  actually  recognized  as  binding  upon  human  nature. 
As  far  back  as  one  can  go  in  human  history,  trusting  in  genu- 
ine historical  sources,  one  finds  society  of  some  sort  already 
organized  upon  substantially  the  same  ethical  basis  as  that 
now  existing.  The  person  makes  the  laws  that  take  on  the 
objective  form  of  custom,  maxim,  common  law,  or  written 
statutes;  and  the  person  responds  to  these  objective  forms  with 
the  feelings,  thoughts,  and  volitions,  which  make  them  to  be, 
in  reality  moral  laws.  The  conception  of  an  impersonal  Law 
is,  therefore,  a  pure  fiction  in  ethics. 

We  may  note,  in  closing  this  chapter,  how  the  conceptions 
of  Virtue,  Duty,  and  Moral  Law,  stand  related  in  the  moral 
consciousness  of  mankind,  in  many  interesting  ways.  Virtue 
is  a  generalization  from  particular  virtues,  or  kinds  of  con- 
duct to  which,  as  due  chiefly  to  moral  reactions  of  the  social 
environment,  the  feelings  of  obligation,  approbation,  and 
merit  have  become  attached.     Duty  is  a  generalization  from 


THE  MORALLY  GOOD  335 

concrete  particular  duties,  each  one  of  which  implies  the  same 
feelings  as  connected  with  forms  of  conduct  dependent  upon 
our  special  relations  with  others  (an  "  oweness "  of  some- 
thing to  be  done  to  some  person).  Law  is  a  generalization 
of  the  maturer  consciousness  of  the  individual  in  his  race 
development  and  more  extended  social  environment.  It  is 
two-sided,  and  implies  validity  ("thatness")  and  content 
("  whatness  ")  ; — an  imperative  which  has  reference  to  some 
external  authority,  although  existing  as  a  mandate  within  the 
human  mind. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS 

Thus  far  our  discussions  have  established  the  truth  that 
the  reality  of  morality  is  to  be  found  in  the  actual  life  and 
development  of  moral  beings  in  social  relations.  These  beings 
are  self-conscious  and  self-determining  minds;  but  in  order 
to  become  true  moral  selves,  they  must  be  something  more. 
And  this  they  are.  For  in  fact  man,  as  human  and  really 
man,  everywhere  and  in  all  times  of  his  history,  has  attributed 
both  a  practical  and  an  ideal  value  to  certain  kinds  of  con- 
duct. Nor  has  this  preference  been  a  matter  simply  of  cool 
and  unimpassioned  judgment;  it  has  been  encited  and  en- 
forced by  certain  distinctively  ethical  emotions.  And  when 
the  question  is  asked :  What  are  those  inner  qualities  and 
the  deeds  flowing  from  them,  which  are  estimated  as  having 
moral  value  and  so  obligator}^  and  as  worthy  of  approval  and 
80  well-deserving?  an  answer  is  given  with  a  fairly  unani- 
mous verdict  from  the  race  in  its  doctrine  of  the  Virtuous 
Life.  This  doctrine  reveals  the  truth  that  the  essence  of  the 
virtuousness  of  the  virtues  consists  in  their  conformity  to  a 
personal  ideal.  It  is  this  Ideal  which  has  value  in-itself  (or, 
so  it  appears  at  first  sight) ;  and  as  having  such  value  it  re- 
ceives the  sanctions  of  moral  consciousness.  The  Moral  Ideal, 
progressively  realized  in  fact  by  the  moral  development  of  the 
race,  is  thus  the  explanatory  conception  discovered  by  philo- 
sophical reflection  upon  the  data  of  ethics.  Moral  Selfhood 
is  a  development  from  the  self-conscious,  self-determining  ef- 
fort to  realize  the  Moral  Ideal. 

But  man  as  moral,  and  as  realizing  an  ideal  because  he  is 
moral,  is  still  a  child  of  nature.  This  nature  which  he  is  self- 
developing  has  been  derived  from  that  larger  ligature  which 

S36 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  337 

begat,  encompasses,  and  supports  him.  What,  then,  has  man's 
moral  nature  to  tell  us  with  regard  to  this  larger  Nature? 
How  can  the  sanctions  which  man  appreciates  and  estimates 
to  be  of  such  worth,  and  the  ideal  which  he  deems  himself 
obligated  to  follow,  be  grounded  in  the  Being  of  the  World? 

Before  we  examine  critically,  the  answers  to  this  problem 
which  have  been  attempted  by  the  different  schools  of  ethics, 
another  obvious  fact  of  man's  ethical  history  must  be  called 
to  mind.  There  has  been  a  universalizing  of  moral  judg- 
ments going  on,  as  an  important  factor  in  the  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  race.  The  views  held  by  savage  and  more  primi- 
tive peoples  as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct  and  char- 
acter are  not  so  essentially  different  in  the  nature  of  the  esti- 
mate, as  in  the  range  of  their  application.  Even  Aristotle 
thought  there  could  be  no  talk  of  justice,  or  of  friendly  feel- 
ing, as  obligatory  on  the  part  of  masters  toward  their  slaves; 
since  "  the  slave  is  a  living  tool,  and  the  tool  is  a  lifeless  slave." 
It  was  Christianity,  with  its  conception  of  common  citizen- 
ship in  the  heavenly  kingdom,  which  first  regarded  the  man 
as  now  "no  longer  a  servant,  but  above  a  servant,  a  brother 
beloved." 

Two  classes  of  influences  have  been  most  important  and 
effective  in  this  process  of  expanding  the  limits  within  which 
the  virtuous  life  is  thought  to  be  applicable,  until  no  excep- 
tions are  to  be  allowed  for  any  member  of  the  human  race. 
These  influences  are,  first,  the  economic,  political,  and  social 
forces  which  have  given  rise  to  their  respective  forms  of 
organizations  and  institutions,  into  which  many  different  in- 
dividuals, families,  ranks,  and  even  races  and  nations,  have 
been  incorporated.  Great  mercantile  and  trading  companies; 
great  empires;  great  associations  of  an  educational,  or  re- 
forming, or  actively  religious  character; — all  these  make 
constant  and  important  contributions  to  the  universalizing  of 
moral  principles.  But  the  influences  of  philosophy  and  of 
religious  doctrine  have  been  no  less  important  and  effective. 


338  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Indeed,  the  moral  ideals  of  the  great  philosophical  and  re- 
ligions teachers  of  mankind,  have  furnished  the  mightiest 
moral  uplifts  to  the  human  race.  Philosophy  has  labored  to 
commend  morality  to  the  collective  reason  of  mankind.  Its 
work  has  been  the  universalizing  of  moral  principles  through 
the  practical  necessity  of  establishing  a  rational  connection 
between  particular  forms  of  conduct  and  these  universal  prin- 
ciples. But  religion,  while  its  moral  doctrines  have  been  on 
the  whole  much  less  rational  and  less  tit  to  command  the  intelli- 
gent judgment  of  mankind,  and  while  the  moral  practices  of 
its  organizations  have  often  been  of  a  low  and  even  degraded 
type,  has  on  the  whole  contributed  powerfully  in  the  same 
direction  of  an  increased  range  to  the  application  of  moral 
ideals.  Muhammadanism,  for  example,  has  bound  all  ranks 
and  conditions  of  many  races,  under  the  bonds  of  one  form  of 
moral  obligation,  in  an  efficient  kind  of  brotherhood.  But 
above  all,  especially  in  its  more  modern  form  of  doctrine  and 
work,  which  is  a  return  to  the  principles  advocated  by  Jesus, 
Christianity  is  striving  to  bring  about  an  extension  of  the 
same  principles  of  life  and  conduct  to  the  entire  race  of  man- 
kind. 

This  pra'ctical  "universalizing"  of  moral  principles  has 
both  supported,  and  in  its  turn  been  helped  by,  the  different 
theories  which  have  endeavored  to  solve  the  final  problems  of 
ethics.  For  according  as  the  moral  nature  of  humanity  mani- 
fests itself,  and  testifies,  as  it  were,  to  its  own  final  purpose 
and  goal,  in  this  enlarged  social  way;  so  the  necessity  is 
made  greater  for  some  rational  account  of  its  own  origin, 
sanctions,  and  ideals.  From  this  necessity  come  the  various 
schools  of  ethics.  These  schools,  in  spite  of  many  minor  di- 
vergences and  differences  in  the  combination  of  their  more  or 
less  in^portant  factors,  may,  in  principle,  be  reduced  to  three. 
We  will  call  them:  (1)  Legalism  in  Ethics;  (2)  Utilitarian- 
ism in  Ethics;  (3)  Idealism  in  Ethics. 

As  a  final  theory  designed  to  account  for  the  origin,  sane- 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  339 

tions,  and  ideals,  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral  development, 
legalism  proposes  the  impersonal  conception  of  Law.  The 
theory  may  take  one  of  two  rather  essentially  different  forms. 
The  first  of  these  uses  the  word  in  the  same  majestic  but 
really  unmeaning  fashion  which  is  so  common  with  the  shal- 
lower thini<crs  in  the  metaphysics  of  the  physical  sciences. 
The  rciutation  of  this  form  of  legalism  in  ethics  has  already 
been  indicated.  Briefly  reviewed,  it  may  be  stated  somewhat 
as  follows :  All  the  facts  of  ethics,  as  we  know  them,  are  really 
subjective  and  personal.  They  are  moments  in  the  life  of  a 
self-conscious  and  self-determining  Self,  as  limited  by  a  cer- 
tain physical  environment,  and  socially  related  to  other  like- 
minded  selves.  But  this  form  of  legalism  summarizes  the 
external  imponents,  hypostasizes  them  under  the  inapplicable 
term  Law,  and  offers  this  abstract  conception  as  the  real 
explanation  of  the  whole  experience.  It  amounts  only  to 
saying  "that  mankind,  in  its  moral  evolution,  has  some- 
how embodied  in  its  social  organizations  certain  ways  of 
behavior,  and  types  of  character,  which  actually  excite  the 
feelings  of  obligation  and  approbation;  and  which,  there- 
fore, appear  to  have  a  right  to  command  the  will,  with  the 
majority  of  the  individuals  forming  these  social  organiza- 
tions." The  criteria,  sanctions,  and  ideals  of  conduct  are 
in  this  way  left,  just  where  they  ought  to  be  left  by  all 
historical  and  descriptive  ethics, — namely,  in  the  conscious 
life  of  the  multitude  of  individuals  that  respond  to  the  stimu- 
lus of  external  condition  with  the  appropriate  ethical  feelings 
and  ideas.  Nothing  is  learned  in  this  way,  however,  as  to 
how  the  source,  the  rational  justification,  the  profounder  sig- 
nificance or  final  purpose,  of  this  experience  of  mankind,  must 
be  conceived  of  in  relation  to  the  Universe  of  which  man  is  a 
part.  All  dynamic  elements  are  lacking  to  such  a  metaphysics 
of  morality.  In  the  name  of  social  laws,  the  theory  deceives 
us  with  empty  abstractions, — mere  generalizations  that  neglect 
altogether  the  moral  point  of  view. 


340  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  The  case  is  somewhat  different  with  the  other  form  of 
Legalism  in  Ethics.  This  theory  asserts  that  the  moral  law- 
is  revealed  in  himian  consciousness,  and  in  such  manner  as  to 
be  independent  of  any  form  of  historical  or  experimental  proof. 
The  Moral  Law  has  thus  the  force — so  the  theory  maintains 
— of  an  unquestioned  rational  principle;  whose  peculiarity, 
however,  consists  in  this,  that  it  does  not  simply  offer  a  state- 
ment of  truth  which  has  demonstrable  and  universal  certainty, 
but  that  it  also  makes  upon  the  will  a  demand  for  obedience 
which  is  equally  exempted  from  all  questions  of  human  scepti- 
cism. The  moral  law  is,  on  account  of  the  fact  that  its 
origin  is  purely  in  reason  and  without  any  admixture  of 
empirical  elements,  both  an  apodeictic  proposition  and  a  cate- 
gorical imperative." 

That  we  cannot  speak  of  any  one  all-inclusive  and  complete 
moral  law,  any  proposition  that  shall  summarize  all  the  essen- 
tial judgments  of  mankind  with  respect  to  ethical  values  and 
all  the  maxims  esteemed  right  for  realizing  these  values  in  a 
virtuous  life,  has  already  been  demonstrated  in  sufficient  de- 
tail. The  very  nature  of  ethical  judgment,  the  plainly 
heterogeneous  character  of  the  moral  code  accepted  by  the  best 
judges,  the  actual  course  of  man's  ethical  evolution,  show  that 
this  conception  of  an  intuitive  all-embracing  moral  principle, 
as  set  into  the  original  constitution  of  human  reason,  or  even 
as  having  evolved  itself  in  the  progressive  formation  of  human 
reason,  is  a  chimera.  Even  more  unwarrantable  have  those 
attempts  been  found  to  be  which  disregard  the  personal  in- 
fluences and  interests  involved  in  all  moral  values;  and  which 
repeat  the  vain  proposal  to  free  the  mind  from  its  natural, 
necessary,  and  rational  tendency,  to  consider  all  these  values 
as  rendered  unthinkable  and  wholly  without  value  as  soon  as 
they  are  treated  from  the  point  of  view  of  impersonal  laws 
and  impersonal  ends. 

Our  contention  against  the  possibility  of  an  a  priori  im- 
personal law  as  offering  a  solution  of  the  more  difficult  prob- 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  341 

lems  of  the  pliilosophy  of  conduct  may  fitly  bo  illustrated  by 
a  few  words  of  criticism  of  Kant's  attempt  in  this  direction. 
In  his  profoundly  philosophical  mind  the  inevitable  connec- 
tion between  ethics,  on  the  one  hand,  and  epistemology  and 
metaphysics,  on  the  other  hand,  is  obvious  and  impressive 
from  the  very  first.  To  found  more  securely  the  principles  of 
conduct  and  the  postulates  and  faiths  of  religion  was  his  pur- 
pose from  the  beginning  of  his  critical  examination  of  human 
reason.  Kant's  criticism  of  so-called  "  pure  reason,"  or  man's 
cognitive  faculties  so  far  as  they  are  native  and  constitutional, 
leaves  these  faculties  embarrassed  and  thwarted  wholly,  when- 
ever the  attempt  is  made  to  extend  knowledge  beyond  the 
confines  of  phenomena.  Within  these  confines  the  same  facul- 
ties operate  to  give  to  all  kinds  of  experience,  both  constitu- 
tive and  regulative  forms  that  are  themselves  quite  independ- 
ent of  experience.  And  when  Kant  comes  to  treat  of  the 
moral  ideas,  he  demands  for  them,  too,  an  origin  that  is  not 
empirical,  but  wholly  supersensuous ;  in  this  respect  he  re- 
mains true  to  the  presuppositions  of  the  Platonic  ethics.  But 
he  is  forced  into  the  position  where  the  very  moral  worth  of 
every  right  action  consists  in  its  being  done  against  resistance. 
Nothing  but  a  bare  law,  unrelated  to  experience  and  arising 
in  a  world  quite  apart  from  the  one  which  we  know,  is  left 
of  the  essence  of  morality.  This  abstract  formula,  thus  de- 
rived by  a  critique  of  man's  moral  consciousness  and  inde- 
pendently of  all  empirical  data,  is  called  by  Kant  the  "  Funda- 
mental Law  of  the  Pure  Practical  Reason."  And  it  is  stated 
by  him,  in  the  chief  one  of  its  slightly  different  forms,  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Act  so  that  the  maxim  of  thy  will  can  always  at  the 
same  time  hold  good  as  a  principle  of  universal  legislation." 
Further  examination  of  this  Law,  to  which  Kant  gives  a 
perfectly  unquestioned  authority  and  an  absolutely  universal 
applicability,  and  which  he  conceives  of  as  a  mandate  of  reason 
entirely  free  from  all  considerations  as  to  the  consequences 
of  conduct  and  as  to  the  feelings  with  which  men  unavoidably 


342  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

contemplate  these  consequences,  shows  that  it  is  neither  a 
priori,  in  any  strict  meaning  of  the  term,  nor  properly  speak- 
ing, impersonal.  Indeed,  whatever  this  law  has  which  com- 
mends itself  to  the  human  feelings  of  obligation,  or  to  the 
reasonable  judgment  of  man,  is  dependent  upon  a  vast  and  vari- 
able evolution  of  human  experience;  and  all  this  experience 
consists  of  forms  of  intercourse  between  persons,  and  of  read- 
justments in  opinions  and  practices  duo  to  such  intercourse. 
That  is  to  say,  all  the  validity  which  the  so-called  a  priori  and 
impersonal  formula  possesses  comes  from  centuries  of  the  use 
of  human  powers  of  reflection  upon  ethical  and  social  phe- 
nomena. 

There  is  much,  however,  in  this  lofty  maintaining  of  the 
claims  of  universal  reason  to  have  somewhere  hidden  in  its 
depths  the  eternal  truths  and  unchanging  principles  of  all 
morality,  which  excites  the  enthusiasm  and  commands  the  re- 
spect of  the  reflective  mind.  The  most  unchanging  truths, 
we  feel,  are  moral.  The  profoundest  insights  into  the  heart 
of  Eeality  are  born  of  the  ethical  nature.  ]\Ian's  kinship  with 
the  Infinite  and  the  Eternal  is  most  intimate  and  strong,  only 
when  he  has  arrived  at  the  maturity  of  a  moral  self-conscious- 
ness. Things  may  be  in  an  unceasing  flux,  and  all  the  physical 
structures  of  human  skill  may  crumble  away.  Even  the  ele- 
ments may  melt  with  fervent  heat,  and  the  heavens  themselves 
be  rolled  up  like  a  parchment  scroll :  but  the  obligations  of 
duty  can  never  be  abated;  the  good  of  righteous  living  does 
not  fade  with  time;  the  moral  ideal  loses  none  of  its  awful 
beauty  or  of  its  unconditioned  value.  Over  and  beyond  the 
last  fading  vision  of  the  things  that  minister  to  a  sensuous 
good,  there  rises  the  spiritual  vision  of  a  good  that  is  lasting 
and  supreme.  And  in  this  Good,  virtue  is  not  the  least  but 
rather  the  most  important  factor;  for  it  is  the  ideal  which  lures 
on  and  encourages  and  commands  the  moral  development  of 
mankind. 

Thus  the  philosopher  who  is  justly  enamored  of  his  own 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  343 

rational  construction  has  always  felt  and  spoken  regarding  his 
Ideal  of  the  morally  Cood.  That  profound  stirring  of  feeling 
which  Kant  designates  "  respect  for  the  law  "  is  itself  a  fact ; 
and  so  is  also  the  movement  of  imagination  and  thought  which 
accompanies  the  feeling.  These  facts  are  the  experiences  not 
to  he  doubted,  of  a  moral  nature  that  is — 

"  Formed  to  rise,  reach  at,  if  not  grasp  and  gain 
The  good  beyond  him, — which  attempt  is  growth." 

It  is  the  source,  the  significance,  the  value,  the  warrant,  and 
the  outcome,  of  the  nature  thus  formed,  and  the  relation  which 
it  sustains  to  the  larger  Nature,  which  offer  to  the  philosophy 
of  conduct  its  ultimate  problems.  These  problems,  which 
utilitarianism  in  ethics  almost  totally  disregards,  are  not  in- 
deed solved  by  legalism  in  ethics;  although  the  latter  theory 
emphasizes  and  reinforces  them  as  the  former  theory  does 
not. 

According  to  the  Kantian  form  of  legalism  in  ethics,  the 
criteria,  sanctions,  and  ideals  of  morality  are  placed  by  Nature 
in  every  human  being,  ready-made  as  it  were,  in  the  form  of 
a  perfectly  intelligible  and  infallible,  but  impersonal  mandate, 
— "  a  principle  of  universal  legislation."  According  to  Utili- 
tarianism in  its  more  modern  and  elaborate  form,  nature 
begets  morality  in  a  quite  different  and  more  roundabout  and 
irresponsible  way.  The  older  form  of  Hedonism  was  frankly 
and  consistently,  even  brutally,  selfish;  it  made  pleasure,  as 
estimated  by  the  subject  of  it,  the  sole  test,  justification,  and 
final  purpose,  or  end,  of  good  conduct.  The  Stoicism  which 
went  to  the  length  of  scorning  all  kinds  of  pleasure,  for  pleas- 
ure's sake,  and  of  seeming  to  cherish  pain  as  a  good  in-itself, 
was  the  extreme  answer  to  this  Hedonistic  extreme.  Neither 
view  could  afford  a  satisfactory  account  of  the  data  of  ethics, 
the  facts  of  man's  moral  experiences ;  and  neither  enabled  the 
inquiring  reason  satisfactorily   to   connect  the   nature   of  the 


344  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

human  Moral  Self  with  that  larger  Nature  in  which  it  must 
somehow  find  its  explanation  and  its  ground.  The  formi  of 
Hedonism  prevalent  in  modern  times  has  striven  to  guard 
against  the  objections,  and  to  supply  the  deficiencies,  of  its 
predecessor,  by  introducing  two  important  modifying  concep- 
tions. Of  these,  one  is  the  conception  of  evolution;  the  other 
is  the  conception  of  qualitative  differences,  implying  degrees  of 
excellence,  in  the  various  pleasures  and  pains  to  which  man's 
sensitive  nature  is  subject.   ' 

Helped  out  by  these  two  modifying  conceptions,  utilitarian- 
ism, with  many  minor  modifications  and  divergences  among  its 
own  most  distinguished  advocates,  has  agreed  substantially  in 
giving  the  following  account  of  the  origin,  nature,  and  devel- 
opment of  the  Moral  Self  and  of  the  customs  and  maxims  ac- 
cepted, as  duly  ethical,  by  a  society  of  moral  selves.  First,  we 
have  to  reckon  with  the  obvious  fact  that  the  animal  man,  like 
all  animal  organisms,  is  sensitive  to  a  great  variety  of  influ- 
ences. On  account  of  the  fact  that  he  stands  at  the  head  of 
the  evolution,  hitherto  accomplished,  of  animal  species,  he  is 
the  most  sensitive  of  the  many  such  beings  of  which  we  have 
knowledge.  He  is  above  all  other  things  capable  of  reacting 
to  his  environment,  both  physical  and  social,  with  a  countless 
variety  of  indefinite  degrees  of  pleasures  and  of  pains.  To  say 
that  he  craves  pleasure  and  dislikes  pain  is  a  m^re  tautology. 
The  attractiveness  of  pleasure,  the  repulsive  power  of  pain, 
are  essential  and  vital  elements  in  the  pleasure-pain  experi- 
ences. But  the  way  that  man  reacts — that  is,  his  own  be- 
havior or  conduct — determines  in  large  measure  the  quality  of 
his  experiences,  whether  pleasurable  or  painful;  and,  as  well, 
the  intensities  and  varieties  of  both  his  pleasures  and  his  pains. 
Nor  is  this  relation  of  cause  and  effect  limited  to  the  individual 
acting;  it  extends  usualh^  if  not  quite  invariably,  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  own  self-hood  and  alTocts  tlie  pleasure- 
pains  of  other  selves.  These  effects  upon  others,  whether  pleas- 
urable or  painful  to  them,  may  also  be  either  pleasurable  or 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  315 

painful  to  the  actor  himself.  For  lie,  let  us  admit,  has  hcen 
already  so  far  developed  by  nature,  in  the  animal  series,  that 
he  is  superior  to  all  the  other  animals,  in  his  sensitiveness  and 
multiform  capacity  for  sympathetic  pleasures  and  sympathetic 
pains. 

What,  now,  inevitably  results  from  this  growing  experience 
of  the  sensitive  nature  of  man  with  the  consequences  of  liis 
conduct,  as  impressed  upon  him  by  nature,  through  the  forces 
of  his  pliysical  and  social  environment,  in  the  form  of  egoistic 
or  sympathetic  pleasures  and  pains?  To  this  question  one  of 
two  answers  may  be  given  in  the  name  of  evolution;  or  both 
of  the  two  answers  may  be  combined.  Some  forms  of  bad 
conduct  are  destructive  of  the  life,  or  the  virility,  of  the  in- 
dividual and  of  society;  and  even  of  its  power  to  propagate 
itself  in  a  prolific  way  or  to  nourish  itself  and  maintain  the 
struggle  for  existence  against  opposing  forces.  The  opposites 
of  these  forms  of  bad  conduct  will,  of  necessity  survive  and 
become  preferred  by  men's  consciousness  through  their  en- 
forced selection  in  the  realm  of  so-called  nature.  Morally 
good  conduct  is,  therefore,  when  viewed  from  this  point  of 
view,  conduct  which  fits  men  to  survive  in  their  struggle  for 
existence  with  natural  forces  and  with  other  men  in  their  social 
environment.  Thus — in  part  at  least — the  morality  which  we 
have  seen  can  belong  only  to  the  life  and  development  of 
a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  Mind,  existing  in  social 
relations  with  others  of  like  mind,  is  explained  as  arising 
out  of  the  unconscious  and  externally,  determined  adaptations 
of  the  animal  man  to  the  conditions  of  his  existence.  Of 
course,  as  the  human  race  multiplies  and  comes  into  more 
varied  and  close  relations  of  an  economic,  political,  intellectual, 
and  social  sort,  what  has  been  called  the  universalizing  of  moral 
principles  is  compelled  more  or  less  promptly  to  take  place. 

Does  the  same  theory  account  also  for  the  "  internalizing " 
of  moral  judgments?  This  important  fact  in  man's  ethical 
history  is  by  no  means  so  easily  explained  by  combining  the 


346  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

doctrine  of  evolution  with  the  fundamental  principle  of  •utili- 
tarianism. The  human  mind  may  be  compelled  by  an  inexora- 
ble nature  to  recognize,  at  first  unconsciously  and  then  with 
more  or  less  of  intelligence,  that  certain  forms  of  conduct  are 
preferable  if  success  is  to  be  attained  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence ;  and  this  recognition  would  afterward  cause  it  to  attach 
a  value  to  these  forms  because  they  are  found  useful  for  the 
purposes  of  this  struggle.  Mankind  might  even,  by  the  ex- 
tension of  the  sphere  of  sympathetic  feeling,  manage  to  cross 
part  way  over  the  bridge  between  the  obvious  fact  that  "  all 
men  want  to  be  happy  "  and  the  moral  obligation  "  to  want 
all  men  to  be  happy"";  although  this  is  hard  to  admit.  But 
it  still  remains  to  show  that  the  essential  quality  of  virtuous- 
ness  is  recognized  by  moral  consciousness  as  its  utility  for 
the  production  of  happiness;  and  yet  further,  to  explain  how 
it  has  come  about  that  this  consciousness  estimates  the  internal 
qualities  of  the  Self  as  having  a  moral  excellence  of  their  own, 
quite  irrespective  of  the  question  whether  they  give  pleasure 
to  their  possessor,  and  not  wholly,  or  even  chiefly,  dependent 
upon  their  nierely  pleasure-pain  consequences  to  his  fellow 
men. 

In  a  word,  when  an  answer  is  sought  for  the  ultimate  grounds 
of  moral  principles,  the  various  considerations  brought  forward 
by  the  most  subtle  and  complex  forms  of  utilitarianism  are 
far  from  satisfactory.  The  help  which  evolution  gives  to  the 
explanation  is  only  superficial.  The  principle  of  evolution  can 
say,  at  most,  only  that  somehow,  because  of  an  experience  of 
their  pleasure-producing  power,  certain  activities  of  the  Moral 
Self  have  come  to  be  preferred ;  and  that  certain  others  are 
discredited,  because  of  their  lack  of  this  power — so  long  as 
the  principle  of  evolution  remains  strictly  faithful  to  the 
principle  of  iitilitarianism.  But  when  the  latter  endeavors  to 
help  out  the  former,  by  turning  its  descriptive  history  into 
really  explanatory  science,  it  departs  from  its  own  essential 
point   of   view.      Then,   in   fact,   Utilitarianism    in    Ethics  be- 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  347 

comes  something  more  than  merely  ntilitarian.  For  virtue 
is  given  another  kind  of  excellence,  essentially  difTerent  from 
its  usefulness  to  the  securing  of  pleasure  and  the  avoiding  of 
pain ;  and  the  "  Moral  Self  "  is  seen  to  be  something  essentially 
higher  than  a  sensitive  and  intellectually  gifted  animal.  Thus 
the  Nature  which  has  produced  such  a  natural  being  is  called 
upon  to  show  further  reason  to  justify  its  ability  for  so  noble 
a  work,  and  for  its  interest  in  the  realization  of  such  an  in- 
comparable ideal. 

Some  of  the  more  conclusive  objections  to  every  form  of 
Utilitarianism  in  Ethics — that  is  to  say,  the  theory  which  at- 
tempts to  explain  the  criteria,  sanctions,  and  ideals  of  the 
Moral  Self  as  arising  wholly  from  the  relative  utility  of  differ- 
ent forms  of  conduct  to  produce  pleasure,  or  avoid  pain — may 
be  briefly  summarized  as  follows :  And,  first,  the  psychology 
of  man's  pleasure-pains  which  is  necessary  to  this  theory  is  not 
true  to  the  facts  of  experience.  In  speaking  of  pleasures  and 
pains  we  are  dealing,  not  with  entities  that  can  be  externally 
measured  or  estimated,  but  only  with  subjective  processes,  the 
estimate  of  whose  intensity  and  value  is  also  a  purely  sub- 
jective affair.  If  A  gets  more  pleasure  (and  therefore  prefers 
it  on  hedonistic  grounds)  from  swilling  beer  than  from  reading 
poetry  or  visiting  the  sick,  or  subscribing  to  the  missionary 
cause,  this  is  simply  an  indisputable  fact;  so  far  as  the  two 
persons  are  governing  their  conduct  merely  by  pleasure-seek- 
ing, there  is  no  difference  in  motive  between  the  two.  Nor  is 
the  moral  character  in  general  the  chief  determining  factor  in 
men's  experiences  of  pleasure  and  pain.  Until  the  painful 
struggles  of  life  have  worked  out  for  the  few  souls  who  attain 
it,  that  consummate  virtue  of  resignation,  and  its  ensuing 
peace,  the  conditions  of  happiness,  so  far  as  they  reside  in  the 
individual,  are  much  more  physiological  and  temperamental 
than  ethical  and  spiritual.  "  Given  freedom  from  disease, 
and  a  slain  antelope,  and  there  could  be  no  merrier  creature 
than  a  Bushman."     Apart  from;  the  consolations  of  religion. 


,^48  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tlicre  is  no  small  ground  for  the  contention  of  Schopenhauer, 
that  intellectual  and  moral  refinements  hreed  pains  much  faster 
than  pleasures.  But  the  whole  utilitarian  theory  breaks  down 
with  the  load  of  repairs  which  its  upper  story  has  to  bear  when 
the  invention  of  John  Stuart  ]\Iill  is  accepted  and  moved  in; 
for  this  acute  analyst  of  human  moral  consciousness  detects 
and  admits  the  fact  that  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining 
mind  does  make  distinctions  between  higher  and  lower  pleasures, 
and  between  noble  and  ignoble  pleasures;  and  that  it  does  even 
prefer  certain  noble  forms  of  suffering  to  certain  ignoble  forms 
of  happiness.  But  the  moment  that  this  truth  has  been  recog- 
nized, a  new  standard  of  estimates  has  been  set  up  over  the 
different  pleasures  and  pains.  This  neiv  standard  is  a  standard 
of  moral  values. 

Utilitarianism  in  Ethics  is  also  disproved  by  its  complete 
failure  to  make  good  its  promise  of  affording  some  definite 
and  scientific  principle  by  which  to  estimate  the  relative  values 
of  dilTerent  kinds  of  conduct  and  types  of  character.  Its 
vague  general  statements  about  the  quantity  of  pleasures  and 
pains,  happiness  and  misery,  which  flow  from  various  ways 
of  living  and  moral  growth,  are  far  enough  from  an  exact 
science.  For  utilitarianism  must  be  held,  in  its  application, 
strictly  accountable  for  an  answer  to  these  three  questions: 
(1)  Whose  happiness  furnishes  the  criterion,  sanction,  and 
rational  ideal  of  morality?  (2)  When  is  this  happiness  to 
be  conceived  of  as  realizable,  in  order  that  it  may  afford  the 
desired  criterion,  sanction,  and  ideal?  (3)  What  is  the  nature 
of  the  happiness  that  stands  in  such  an  essential  relation  to 
morality?  And  it  must  answer  these  questions  in  such  a  way 
as  (1)  to  furnish  a  criterion  for  distinguishing  between  the 
morally  good  and  the  morally  bad,  in  behavior  and  in  char- 
acter; (2)  to  account  for  the  sanctions  on  which  the  actual 
moral  judgments  of  mankind  rely  in  justifying  the  feelings 
of  responsibility,  and  of  moral  approbation  and  disapprobation, 
together  with  the  right  and  the  duty  of  treatment  appropriate 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  349 

to  the  moral  character;  and   (3)    it  must  explain  the  nature 
and  development  of  the  moral  ideal. 

If  now  it  be  said  that  wliatever  form  of  pleasure  or  happiness 
(for  the  real  issue  of  the  argument  is  not  changed  by  an 
interchange  of  these  words)  is  preferred  by  the  individual, 
taking  his  own  life  onli/  into  the  account,  precisely  that,  and  no 
other  form  of  pleasure  or  happiness  ought  to  serve  him  as 
the  criterion  and  the  ideal  of  his  own  conduct;  and  that  this 
preference  is  itself  the  sufficient  justification  of  such  conduct; 
this  is  as  near  as  a  strict  doctrine  of  utilitarianism  can  come 
to  giving  a  manageable  rule  of  life.  I  know  what  gives  me 
most  happiness;  and  although  I  cannot  calculate  with  much 
approach  to  scientific  accuracy,  the  sum-total  of  my  kind  of 
preferred  happiness  during  my  whole  life,  I  can  come  nearer 
to  this  than  to  the  true  answer  for  any  other  person, — much 
nearer,  than  for  mankind  in  general.  But  to  adopt  such  a 
criterion,  such  an  ideal  of  the  life  to  be  preferred,  is  to  go 
squarely  athwart  all  the  most  cultivated  feelings  and  judg- 
ments of  the  race  with  regard  to  the  very  nature  and  destiny 
of  the  Moral  Self.  It  is,  at  best,  to  become  in  the  opinion 
of  mankind  a  calculating  and,  possibly,  a  refined  voluptuary, 
but  not  a  good  man.  All  social  development  sets  itself  against 
the  attempt  to  put  into  practice  such  a  theory  of  the  moral 
life; — and  by  no  means  least,  the  morally  most  perfect  society. 
I  must,  then,  take  others  into  the  account, — at  least,  some 
others — in  adopting  for  myself,  some  principle  to  regulate 
conduct.  I  must,  therefore,  so  govern  my  conduct  as  to  secure 
the  maximum  of  happiness  for  a  portion  of  my  fellows,  with- 
out sacrificing  unduly  my  own  claims  to  happiness.  Here 
again,  however,  I  am  at  once  met  with  the  problem :  Shall  it 
be  with  those  who  prefer  the  things  in  which  I  find  and  antici- 
pate most  pleasure;  or  shall  it  also  be,  in  part,  with  those  who 
have  other  standards  of  pleasure?  In  case  I  am  sensuous, 
must  my  moral  union  be  with  epicures  and  prostitutes;  in  case 
I  am  of  intellectual  or  artistic  tastes,  with  scholars  and  artists. 


350  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

etc.?  But  in  any  case,  utilitarianism  requires  that  the  ^foral 
Self  shall  be  controlled  in  all  its  moral  purposes  and  relations 
by  its  ideas  as  to  how  to  get,  and  to  give,  the  most  of  its  own 
particular,  preferred  kind  of  happiness.  The  world  beyond 
may  go  its  own  way  and  utilize  its  conduct  to  the  end  of  se- 
curing its  own  preferred  kind  of  happiness. 

No  doubt  a  certain  amount  of  this  selfish  sort  of  self-classi- 
fying in  the  pursuit  of  social  enjoyment  is  generally  held  to 
be  ethically  justifiable.  But  we  have  undertaken  to  discover 
the  essential  characteristics  of  the  virtuous  life — in  such  form 
that  the  discovery  shall  explain  and  justify  the  feeling  of  ob- 
ligation which  Nature  has  fastened  on  the  race,  and  the  ideal 
of  moral  goodness  which  It  has  slowly,  but  now  clearly,  lifted 
above  the  horizon  so  as  to  make  this  ideal  a  matter  of  self- 
conscious  appreciation  and  self-determining  choice  and  en- 
deavor, for  the  race. 

The  further  expansion  of  the  theory  of  utilitarianism,  which 
the  growth  of  moral  consciousness  in  the  race  demands,  results 
in  a  complete  bursting  of  its  bands.  The  man  who  thinks  to 
be  moral  by  associating  himself  in  a  calculating  way  with 
those  of  like  mind  and  tastes  with  himself,  as  to  how  to  get 
the  most  pleasure  out  of  life,  finds  himself,  as  judged  by  the 
highest  standards,  far  below  the  mark  of  the  moral  ideal.  In 
the  first  place,  he  has  no  sufficient  sanction  for  those  heroic 
and  self-sacrificing  virtues  which  are  particularly  admired  by 
tlie  moral  judgment  of  mankind.  In  the  second  place,  his  in- 
terests are  narrow,  and  the  virtuous  deeds  called  out  by  them 
are  lacking  in  breadth  and  depth.  But — more  fatal  still  to 
the  theory — unless  he  is  seeking  by  his  conduct  to  promote 
tlie  true  and  the  highest  happiness  of  others,  as  well  as  of 
himself,  he  is  not  really  dutiful  to  the  sanctions,  or  working 
toward  the  ideal,  of  morality  at  all.  As  we  have  already  shown, 
however,  the  moment  you  scale  your  pleasures  or  happinesses  so 
as  to  make  some  of  them  true  and  others  false  or  deceptive, 
some  intrinsically  high  and  others  base,  you  have  abandoned 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  351 

the  utilitarian  standard;  but  you  have  found  the  more  excellent 
way.  You  have  admitted  that  the  values  of  a  life  which  is 
struggling  to  attain  the  moral  ideal,  while  relying  upon  the 
sanctions  of  moral  consciousness  to  justify  its  reason  in  this 
struggle,  are  too  excellent — or  excellent  in  another  way — to  be 
expressed  by  such  terms  as  denote  only  degrees  of  pleasure  or 
happiness.  You  may  change  your  word  to  welfare,  if  you 
choose.  For  it  is  not  happiness,  or  pleasure,  as  such  (quoad 
happiness)  which  imparts  the  sanction  to  the  realization  of 
virtue  in  this  kind  of  a  moral  life;  neither  is  it  the  maximum 
of  happiness  for  all,  in-itself  considered,  which  constitutes  its 
moral  ideal.  To  be  virtuous,  even  at  the  cost  of  suffering  made 
inevitable  by  the  physical  and  social  environmient  and,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  essential  to  the  very  process  of  moral  develop- 
ment, is  welfare  for  the  Moral  Self.  Morality  cannot  be  made 
the  mere  servant  of  happiness,  not  to  say,  its  tool.  Moral 
goodness,  as  a  qualification  of  moral  self-hood,  has  life  and 
worth,  incomparable,  in  itself. 

When  it  extends  its  claims  over  all  generations  and  tribes 
of  human  beings,  and  even  beyond,  into  the  invisible  regions 
of  hypothetical  selves  or  future  disembodied  spirits,  utili- 
tarianism becomes  yet  more  hopelessly  bewildered  in  its  argu- 
ment. What  sanction  the  religious  devotee  or  patriotic  martyr 
can  establish  in  reason  for  his  feeling  of  obligation  to  sacrifice 
himself  in  behalf  of  the  future  realization  of  a  Divine  King- 
dom, or  to  help  gain  some  centuries  of  a  prosperous  Common- 
wealth, from  the  obligation  to  seek  happiness,  if  such  an  ob- 
ligation exists  at  all  as  a  moral  affair,  it  is  impossible  to 
explain. 

Finally,  to  return  to  an  earlier  point  of  view,  utilitarianism 
does  not  help  the  theory  of  moral  development  to  explain  how 
morality  arose  out  of  the  non-moral ;  how  the  obligation  bravely 
and  self-sacrificingly  to  face  pain  in  the  interests  of  an  ethical 
ideal  sprang  from  a  natural  craving  for  pleasure  and  a  natural 
shrinking  from  pain.    And  here  we  come  upon  a  point  at  which 


353  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

the  views  of  evolution  and  of  utilitarianism  seem  to  be  not 
onl}^  divergent  but  even  contradictory.  Nowhere  else  is  it  so 
clear  as  in  the  moral  sphere  that  the  desired  end  cannot  be 
realized,  or  even  approached,  except  by  paying  the  cost  in  im- 
mense suffering  all  along  the  way.  Courage,  temperance,  con- 
stancy, wisdom,  justice,  fidelity,  and  kindness,  are  virtues  quite 
inconceivable  in  a  world  free  from  temptations,  suffering,  loss. 
Indeed,  such  is  the  essential  nature  of  the  Moral  Self  that  it 
cannot  come  into  being  at  all  except  by  way  of  a  process  which 
is  one  long-continued  painful  struggle. 

The  refusal  to  regaixl  morality  as  having  either  its  criterion, 
its  sanctions,  or  its  ideal,  in  happiness  merely,  has  been  so 
complete  in  the  world's  best  literature  that  one  scarcely  need 
cite  examples  to  show  its  truth.  Dramatists,  poets,  biographers, 
and  historians,  who  have  taken  the  ethical  point  of  view,  as 
well  as  the  surer  insight  of  the  highest  class  of  modern  novel- 
ists, have  refused  to  depict  or  to  estimate  the  values  of  human 
life  in  terms  merely  of  pleasure  and  pain,  of  happiness  and 
suffering.  The  necessary  discipline  of  pain,  and  the  moral 
worthiness  of  disregarding  the  purely  hedonistic  standard  have 
so  impressed  the  minds  of  the  poets  generally  as  to  evoke  many 
passages  like  that  one  often  quoted  from  Browning's  Eabbi 
Ben   Ezra: 

"  Then  welcome  each  rebuff  that  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough. 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go! 
Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain, 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;    dare,  never  grudge  the  throe." 

We  cannot,  therefore,  accept  the  claim  of  Utilitarianism  in 
Ethics  that  the  criterion,  the  sanctions,  and  the  rational  end 
of  conduct  are  all  to  be  found  wholly  in  tlie  relation  which 
conduct  sustains  to  human  happiness.  Conduct  is,  in  fact,  a 
function  productive  of  happiness  or  unhapi)iness;  this  is  one 
truth  of  experience.     But  men  call   conduct  good  or  bad, — 


SQHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  353 

meaning  by  these  terms  to  designate  the  characteristics  of 
conduct  in  relation  to  another  ideal  standard  than  that  of 
happiness.  This  is  another  truth  of  experience.  These  two 
truths  cannot  be  united  in  the  theory  that  conduct  is  to  be 
considered,  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  solely  as  a  function 
productive  of  happiness  or  unhappiness;  that  the  rationality 
of  the  demand  made  upon  moral  consciousness  for  right  con- 
duct is  based  solely  upon  the  value  of  its  eudaemonistic  tendency ; 
and,  finally,  that  the  end  at  which  moral  self-culture  aims  is 
solely  the  end   of   attaining  happiness. 

To  review  the  problem  of  conduct  as  it  now  comes  before 
us  for  solution :  We  are  seeking  for  some  rational  account  for 
the  origin  and  grounds  of  that  quality  of  "  Tightness "  which 
men  attribute  to  some  conduct  in  preference  to  other  conduct. 
We  are  seeking  not  so  much  to  explain  the  facts  of  particular 
preferences,  but  to  discover  a  universal  basis  which  our  rational 
nature  may  approve  for  the  fact  of  this  hind  of  a  preference. 
In  the  course  of  the  search,  the  admission  has  been  forced 
from  the  advocates  of  the  hedonistic  theory  that  men  do  not 
actually  regard  the  preference  of  morally  right  conduct  as 
identical  with  the  choice  of  the  course  which  seems  to  bring 
to  the  individual  the  maximum  of  mere  happiness.  The  ad- 
mission has  also  been  forced  that  men  do  not  regard  themselves 
as  obligated  merely  to  seek  happiness  for  themselves,  nor  do 
they  claim  the  sanctions  of  conscience  for  seeking  happiness, 
in  the  same  way  as  for  the  effort  to  do  right,  and  for  the 
striving  after  the  realization  of  the  moral  ideal.  The  admis- 
sion has  also  been  forced  that  in  the  practical  reason  of  nian- 
kind,  the  ideal  of  happiness  and  the  ideal  of  a  Moral  Self 
functioning  perfectly  so  far  as  its  own  conduct  is  concerned, 
in  social  relations  to  other  selves,  are  not  absolutely  identical 
ideals.  What  more  is  needed  to  constitute  the  admission  that 
the  criterion,  the  sanctions,  and  the  ideal  end  of  conduct,  as 
regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  ethics,  are  not  to  be 
found  in  happiness  alone? 


354  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  considerations  ^vhich 
the  modern  theory  of  evolution  has  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
older  forms  of  Hedonism  are  important;  and  that  their  ad- 
mission into  the  theory  produces  certain  improvements  in  the 
current  forms  of  Uiilitarianism  in  Ethics.  So  far  as  the 
theory  of  evolution  is  applied  to  the  explanation  of  the  changes 
that  have  gone  on  in  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  race  toward 
different  customs  and  practices,  it  throws  a  flood  of  light  upon 
ethical  phenomena.  Undoubtedly,  the  experience  both  of  the 
individual  and  of  the  race  with  the  pleasurable  or  painful  con- 
sequences of  the  current  customs  and  practices  is  always 
changing — and  often  profoundly  or  even  completely  changing 
— the  moral  attitude  of  the  community  toward  these  customs 
and  practices.  The  typical  morality  is  uniformly,  to  a  large 
extent,  the  construction  of  the  physical  and  social  forces  that 
enter  into  the  total  evolution  of  human  life;  and  hedonistic 
considerations  are,  of  course,  powerful  amongst  these  forces. 
But  they  are  by  no  means  the  whole  of  the  forces  which  shape 
the  moral  evolution  of  mankind ;  and  the  history  of  this 
evolution  itself  shows  that  they  are  not.  It  is  necessary  again 
to  remind  ourselves  of  that  fallacy  to  which  the  advoci'.tc  of 
the  theory  of  evolution  in  ethics  is  constantly  tempted, — the 
fallacy,  namely,  of  identifying  a  partial  and  defective  history 
of  moral  development  with  a  complete  and  satisfactory  account 
of  its  underlying  causes  and  its  fundamental  principles. 

After  making  the  necessary  restrictions  and  explanations 
there  are  few  real  reasons  left  for  the  present  close  alliance 
between  utilitarianism  and  evolutionary  ethics.  The  just  claims 
of  both,  as  based  upon  facts  of  experience  and  upon  fair  con- 
clusions from  those  facts,  can  be  better  admitted  and  incor- 
porated into  a  satisfactory  ethical  theory,  if  this  alliance  is 
severed.  Those  complicated  and  distinctive  forms  of  activity 
which  make  man  a  moral  being  cannot,  strictly  speaking,  be 
explained  as  evolved  from  any  less  complex  and  more  vaguely 
animal  forms   of   functioning.      His   moral    endowment  being 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  355 

once  assumed,  however,  the  various  modifications  which  it  un- 
dergoes are  explicable — theoretically  at  least — in  terms  of  the 
theory  of  evolution.  On  the  other  hand,  the  important  part 
which  man's  susceptibility  to  an  increasing  variety  of  pleasures 
and  pains  plays  in  his  ethical  development  cannot,  of  course, 
be  denied;  nor  should  it  ever  for  a  moment  be  lost  sight  of 
by  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 

Indeed,  it  is  to  these  considerations,  which  admit  the  value 
of  happiness  and  yet  deny  that  happiness  is  the  sole  criterion, 
sanction,  and  ideal  end  of  morality,  that  we  must  attribute 
the  unsettled  condition  in  which  psychology  and  history  leave 
the  student  of  ethics.  But  utilitarianism  offers  no  delivery 
from  these  painful  dilemmas.  On  the  contrary  it  widens  the 
gulf,  intensifies  the  strife,  and  perpetuates  the  schism,  between 
the  Sentient  Self  and  the  Moral  Self.  It  tends  to  make 
a  hopelessly  divided  manhood.  For  the  same  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  being  cannot,  under  existing  circumstances, 
pursue  both  happiness  and  fidelity  to  the  moral  ideal  as  ita 
supreme  end  in  life.  No  amount  and  no  subtlety  of  intellect, 
when  employed  in  calculating  amounts,  kinds,  and  ideal  values 
of  happiness  merely,  can  so  equip  human  nature  as  to  fit  it 
for,  or  conduct  it  toward,  a  rational  and  morally  worthy 
end.  We  must  look,  then,  to  some  other  form  of  theory  for 
help  in  the  further  solution  of  the  most  profound  problems  of 
ethics. 

The  answer  which  Idealism  feels  compelled  to  give  to  the 
ultimate  problem  of  ethics  is,  therefore,  unmistakable.  It 
accepts  all  the  truths  to  which  legalism  and  utilitarianism 
make  their  appeal.  The  Kantian  form  of  legalism  is  grandly 
right  in  holding  that  the  moral  ideal  is  bedded  in  human 
nature  in  such  manner  as  to  be  its  own  criterion,  and  sanc- 
tion; and  that  the  worth  of  this  ideal  is  absolute  and  not 
dependent  upon  the  sensitiveness  to  pleasure-pains  of  the 
animal  man,  as  shaped  by  his  physical  and  social  environment. 
But   utilitarianism,   joined   with   the   theory   of   evolution,   is 


356  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

also  right  in  connecting  man's  moral  being  and  moral  de- 
velopment in  a  causal  way  with  the  Being  and  Evolution  of 
the  Universe  as  known  by  man.  The  truths  of  both  these 
theories  must,  therefore,  be  incorporated  into  the  conception 
of  this  Universe  as  being  ethical  in  its  own  nature  and — so 
to  say — "  its  own  right."  L^nless  man's  moral  ideals  are  really 
to  have  their  ground,  their  sanction,  and  their  final  purpose,  in 
the  Being  of  the  World,  they  are  merely  subjective,  without 
rational  ground,  or  sanction,  and  without  sure  promise  of  a 
satisfying  end.  That  Nature,  in  which  the  physical  sciences 
do  not  hesitate  to  find  the  self-like  characteristics  of  order, 
of  force  directed  toward  appreciable  and  intelligible  results, 
of  obedience  to  so-called  laws,  and  of  other  forms  of  rationality; 
that'  Nature,  in  which  the  biological  sciences  discover  the 
sources,  the  selective  and  directive  energies,  the  mysterious 
qualitative  changes  that  result  in  the  formation  of  species  after 
species  according  to  different  types;  that  Nature,  whose  latest 
offspring  is  the  human  Self,  with  its  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  mind ; — that  same  Nature  must  stand  sponsor  for 
this  same  offspring's  moral  endowment  and  moral  development. 
The  criteria,  sanctions,  and  ideal  of  ethics,  must  have  their 
ultimate  source  and  final  warrant  in  the  World-Ground. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  there  is  something  mystical  and 
not  easily  to  be  demonstrated  by  an  offhand  appeal  to  human 
experience  in  this  belief  of  Idealism  that  the  World  is  itself 
moral  at  the  core.  There  are,  indeed,  many  things  done  by 
Nature  which  are  exceedingly  trying  to  this  faith — if  faith  it 
is  to  be  called.  In  view  of  some  of  the  most  natural  procedures 
one  is  tempted  to  call  the  "  Mother  "  of  men  wholly  non-moral, 
or  most  cruelly  and  persistently  immoral,  when  judged  by  hu- 
manity's highest  standard  of  what  comports  with  its  moral  ideal. 
Even  the  devout  and  resigned  religious  believer  is  compelled 
to  abjure  the  arrogance  of  a  claim  to  justify  all  the  divine 
procedure  by  admitting  that  "  His  ways  are  not  as  our  ways." 
And  yet  the  orthodox  theological  conception  of  God  is,  in  im- 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  357 

portant  respects,  singularly  like  the  orthodox  scientific  con- 
ception of  Nature. 

We  are  not,  however,  just  now  engaged  in  trying  to  prove 
the  perfect  goodness  of  the  Divine  Being,  Our  present  claim 
is  one  which  calls  for  less  of  faith;  and  which  admits  of  more 
of  evidence  from  the  particular  sciences,  as  well  as,  especially, 
from  the  moral  consciousness  itself.  The  claim  is  simply  this: 
The  non-moral  cannot  produce  from  itself  the  truly  moral  life 
and  moral  development.  A  collection  of  beings,  having  unity 
enough  to  be  called  a  World,  or  a  System  of  Nature,  or  a 
Universe — what  you  will — that  can  develop  a  race  of  self- 
conscious  and  self-determining  beings,  who  feel  the  sanctions, 
observe  the  criteria,  and  seek  the  ideal,  of  an  ethically  right 
social  status,  must  have  in  itself  the  sufficient  explanation  of 
this  unparalleled  and  glorious  achievement. 

The  conclusion  just  drawn  is,  of  course,  speculative;  but  it 
is  not  purely  speculative,  if  by  "  purely  "  be  meant  a  speculation 
without  basis  in  historical  experience.  The  declaration  of 
Matthew  Arnold  was  not  an  exaggeration.  He  found  proofs 
in  history  of  a  "  Power-not-ourselves  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness." If  the  physical  and  biological  sciences  are  allowed  to 
use  their  own  terminology,  without  being  called  too  strictly  to 
account  for  a  liberal  interpretation,  they  have  no  objection  to 
speaking  of  the  benevolence  of  Nature's  laws  and  of  the  wis- 
dom with  which  she  secures  improved  results  by  seemingly 
severe,  but  really  on  the  whole  kindly,  methods  of  procedure. 
Now  benevolence  and  wisdom  are  qualities  of  Selfhood  in  ac- 
tion, and  not  of  impersonal  laws  or  formulas.  Physiology, 
medicine,  and  hygiene,  are  always  declaiming  about  the  re- 
wards of  virtuous  living,  not  only  or  chiefly  to  the  good  man 
himself,  but  to  his  children,  to  his  children's  children,  and  to 
his  neighbor's.  Economists  and  moralists  have  no  doubt  that 
Nature,  including  above  all  the  social  manifestations,  favors 
right  conduct  and,  on  the  whole,  "  rewards  accordingly  "  the 
conduct  which   is  morally  wrong.     While  there  are  no  other 


35S  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

so  powerful  and  convincing  preachers  of  the  doctrine  that 
righteousness  exalts  nations,  as  those  who  know  the  history  of 
nations;  or  those  true  statesmen  who  are  trying  honestly  and 
intelligently  to  guide  national  affairs.  The  particular  ways 
in  which  the  Being  of  the  World  manifests  its  ethical  prefer- 
ences are,  indeed,  painfully  slow,  roundabout  and  hidden;  but 
they  seem,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be  fairly  well  marked  as  to 
their  intention  and  reasonably  sure,  if  given  time  enough  to 
work  through  to  the  end  the  forces  which  are  executing  its 
Will.  The  ancient  Greeks,  who  were  excelled  by  the  Hebrews 
in  the  practical  recognition  of  a  God  of  righteousness  as  the 
Moral  Ruler  of  man,  themselves  excelled  all  others  of  their 
own  time  in  their  reflective  study  of  ethical  principles.  They 
admitted  that  "  the  mills  of  the  gods  "  grind  exceeding  slow ; 
but  they  knew  that  these  mills  grind  exceeding  small. 

In  computing  the  moral  character  of  Nature,  however,  after 
having  rejected  the  fallacies  of  both  legalism  and  utilitarianism 
in  ethics,  it  is  obligatory  of  idealism  not  to  commit  the  same 
fallacies  again.  Nature  is  not  to  be  convicted  of  immorality, 
because  she  has  not  endowed  man  all  at  once  with  a  perfectly 
infallible  law  by  which  to  read  on  tables  of  the  mind  his  own 
particular  duties,  on  all  possible  occasions;  nor  again,  because 
she  has  not  given  him  a  complete  insight  into  her  own  ethical 
character  and  ethical  ideals.  In  all  her  many  aspects,  Nature 
is  far  too  large  to  be  quickly  and  readily  comprehended  by  the 
human  mind.  If  there  is  much  which  is  puzzling,  and  even 
seemingly  self-contradictory  about  her  moral  character,  this  is 
no  other  kind  of  puzzle  than  those  which  arise  whenever  her 
ways  are  studied  from  whatever  point  of  view.  When  we  re- 
jected the  extravagant  claims  of  the  Kantian  ethics,  we  sur- 
rendered our  hope  of  finding  anywhere  an  immediate  intuition 
into  the  very  depths  of  universal  moral  reason,  as  a  ground  for 
a  confidence  which  admits  no  possibility  of  error,  and  which 
pays  no  tribute  to  a  slow  evolution  of  the  criteria,  sanctions, 
and  ideals  of  morality. 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  359 

There  is  much  more  danger  to  idealism,  however,  from  a 
temptation  to  return  to  some  of  tlic  subtler  fallacies  of  hedon- 
ism or  utilitarianism  in  ethics.  Certainly  Nature  has  not  pro- 
vided such  an  outfit  or  environment  for  either  the  individual 
or  the  race  as  to  give  it  the  maximum  of  conceivable  happiness. 
Here  again  the  Greeks  were  wise ;  for  they  declared  "  It  is 
for  toils  that  the  gods  sell  all  good  things  to  men."  Happiness, 
independent  of  conduct  and  character,  would  belong  to  a  non- 
moral  or  positively  immoral  system  of  things  and  men.  But 
the  deeper  truth  lies  in  this  discovery:  Happiness,  whether 
for  the  individual  or  for  the  race,  cannot  furnish  the  sole 
criteria,  sanctions,  and  ideal,  of  moral  life  and  moral  develop- 
ment. What  pledge  of  making  morality  to  be  that,  which  it 
essentially  is  not,  could  Nature  give  in  order  to  establish  in 
man's  experience  her  own  reputation  for  morality?  If  Nature 
has  the  higher  regard  for  the  good  of  moral  selfhood,  and  of  a 
society  conposed  of  selves  who  are  striving  for  the  realization 
of  this  good,  rather  than  for  the  happiness  of  her  children, 
she  cannot  conduct  herself  as  though  the  moral  criteria,  sanc- 
tions, and  ideals,  were  to  be  found  in  amounts  merely  of 
pleasures  and  pains.  Otherwise,  the  moral  philosopher  might 
assume  this  bold  attitude  toward  his  Mother,  and  say :  "  I 
am  holier  than  thou." 

And,  strangely  enough,  this  is  what  virtually  takes  place  in 
human  experience.  For  so  firmly  fixed  is  the  conviction  that 
Nature  is  morally  responsible  for  the  way  in  which  it  treats 
man,  as  to  control  the  thought  and  language  of  those  who  most 
stoutly  refuse  to  credit  all  that  is  implied  in  the  inference. 
Eeligion,  in  its  highest  form,  recommends  resignation  to  the 
will  of  God  as  accountable  for  the  just  and  wise  and  loving 
distribution  of  the  goods  and  evils  of  life.  In  its  lowest  forms, 
it  is  frankly  dualistic;  the  evils  of  human  life  must  be  borne 
as  coming  from  devils  that  reside  in  natural  things  and  forces, 
and  are  hard  to  propitiate.  But  agnosticism  and  atheism 
are  most  inconsistent  and  illogical  at  this  point.     They  affirm 


360  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AXD  REALITY 

in  theory  the  totally  impersonal  and  non-moral  character  of 
the  system  of  things.  And  yet  in  practice,  they  are  inclined 
to  demand  honorable  and  fair  treatment  from  this  impersonal 
and   non-moral   source. 

More  than  by  any  other  argument,  however,  is  the  interest 
of  Nature  in  man's  moral  development  manifested  by  the 
conditions  and  laws  which  it  has  fixed  for  the  existence  and 
welfare  of  society.  Every  example  of  right  conduct  is,  by  its 
very  nature,  subjective  and  individual.  It  is  some  person's 
conduct;  and  as  conduct,  it  is  an  affair  of  conscious  feeling, 
judgment,  and  volition,  considered  in  relation  to  an  ideal. 
This  ideal,  too,  is  subjective  and  individual.  It  is  the  product 
of  that  same  individual's  judging  and  imagining  activity.  But 
in  society  the  Right  appears  also  as  objectified  and  universalized. 
For  all  men  have,  in  order  to  constitute  them  moral  and  capable 
of  living  together  under  ethico-social  relations,  a  certain  con- 
stitutional equipment ;  and  certain  common  relations,  like  those 
of  the  family,  the  tribe,  or  some  more  complex  social  organiza- 
tion, belong  to  men  everywhere  and  at  all  times.  Therefore, 
the  conduct  of  the  individual  is  never  his  own  affair  solely.  It 
has  constantly  to  measure  itself  by  this  more  objective  and 
generally  accepted  standard ;  and  its  ideal  can  never  be  achieved 
or  even  approached  by  those 

"Who  trimmed  in  forms  and  visages  of  duty, 
Keep  yet  tlieir  liearts  attending  on  tliemselves." 

"  Moreover,  these  two  ideals — both  the  individual  and  sub- 
jective, and  the  objective  and  universal — are  never  framed 
in  any  approach  to  a  complete  independence  of  each  otlier; 
nor  can  they  be  kept  apart  in  their  application  to  the  theoretical 
solution  of  the  problems  of  conduct,  or  in  their  effect  upon  the 
feelings  and  deeds  which  correspond  to  moral  ideals.  Not 
infrequently  the  two  seem  struggling  together;  the  one  to 
enforce  laws  and  rules,  and  to  realize  in  the  social  organization 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  361 

the  conception  of  an  eternal  and  absolute  character  for  that 
which  is  esteemed  right;  the  other  to  introduce  exceptions  and 
to  break  down  existing  laws  and  rules  by  an  appeal  to  some 
superior  interest  or  higher  authority, 

"  It  cannot  be  said,  however,  that  the  doubts  and  oppositions 
over  the  problems  of  conduct  which  characterize  all  human 
experience,  and  which  especially  characterize  the  epochs  of 
rapid  transition  in  customs  and  moral  judgments,  affect  the 
fundamental  Nature  of  the  Right.  Nor  can  it  be  asserted  that 
tlie  antagonism,  or  even  the  two-foldness,  which  seems  espe- 
cially to  develope  at  these  epochs,  exists  between  the  individual's 
ideal  of  his  own  self  and  the  social  ideal.  For,  in  truth, 
the  ultimate  moral  ideal  is  always  necessarily  social;  it  is  in- 
variably conceived  of  by  every  idealistic  theory,  which  has  any 
claim  to  critical  consideration,  as  including  the  moral  good 
of  one  and  of  the  many,  of  the  individual  and  of  the  social 
organization.  What  precisely  this  ideal  good  may  be,  and 
how  it  is  going  to  harmonize  in  particular  cases,  or  in  the 
final  result,  the  interests  both  of  the  individual  and  of  society, 
no  one  may  be  able  to  describe  a  priori.  Certainly,  no  theory 
which  confounds  all  morality  with  the  prudential  virtues  can 
frame  a  solution  for  the  problems  presented  by  the  conflicting 
interests  of  the  individual  and  society.  But  so  far  as  one 
attends  strictly  to  the  moral  ideal,  the  difficulties  and  antag- 
onisms between  the  individual  and  society  are  of  another 
order. 

"  These  difficulties  and  antagonisms  seem  to  emerge  in  some- 
thing like  the  following  way:  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  plain 
that  the  more  inclusive  moral  ideal  is  social;  it  is  therefore 
adapted  to  control  the  particular  ideal  of  the  individuals  com- 
posing society.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  social  ideal  itself 
is  decidedly  not  the  ideal  of  a  social  organization  in  which 
the  customs,  maxims,  laws,  and  opinions,  that  are  for  the  time 
being  most  popular  and  dominant,  assert  and  enforce  the  right 
to  control  absolutely  the  individual  in  the  pursuit  of  his  own 


nfi?  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

moral  ideal.  Such  an  association  would  not  correspond  to  the 
ideal  of  a  society  of  truly  moral  selves.  Indeed,  the  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  organizations  which  have — no  matter  with  what 
pretence  of  a  good  conscience,  or  with  what  show  of  reasonable 
grounds — endeavored  so  to  dictate  moral  ideas  and  laws  to 
their  individual  members  have  usually  turned  out  most  mis- 
chievous and  abominable  tyrannies.  The  present  day  proposals 
which  are  more  subtle  and  indirect,  whether  of  the  more  pro- 
nouncedly imperialistic  or  socialistic  order,  to  force  conformity 
to  some  common  social  ideal,  when  the  moral  self  is  not  in- 
telligently committed  to  it  as  its  very  own  ideal,  will  un- 
doubtedly prove  just  as  unfavorable  to  a  real  moral  develop- 
ment. The  two  most  prominent  existing  and  contending  types 
of  social  organization — imperialism  and  socialism — are  both 
characteristically  immoral  and  fatally  destructive  to  genuine 
morality.  For,  the  moment  you  conceive  of  your  social  or- 
ganization as  successfully  framed  after  the  pattern  tliat  com- 
mends itself  to  the  ethical  judgment,  and  that  stirs  moral 
feeling  and  the  imagination  in  appreciation  of  its  intrinsic 
excellence,  you  have  rejected  for  the  individual  tlie  supreme 
authority  of  the  prevalent  customs,  maxims,  laws,  and  opinions. 
"An  ethically  ideal  society  is,  therefore,  such  that  it  can  be 
constituted  only  of  ideally  good  persons  living  together  in  social 
relations.  But  the  good  person  is  the  moral  Self  who  self- 
consciously and  voluntarily  shapes  his  conduct  in  conformity 
to  his  own  ideal  of  what  a  Self  ought  to  be.  He  is  indeed 
deferential  to  society;  he  conforms  oftentimes  to  its  customs 
and  laws,  and  oftentimes  remains  silent  in  the  presence  of  its 
maxims  and  opinions,  although  they  do  not  represent  satisfac- 
torily the  ideal  which  he  has  made  his  own.  lie  is  devoted  to 
the  best  interests  of  society,  as  he  understands  these  interests; 
for  them  he  may  wish  to  live,  and  on  occasion  be  quite  willing 
to  die.  But  he  can  conscientiously  do  this,  and  so  maintain 
in  integrity  his  own  moral  selfhood,  only  in  so  far  as  his  own 
moral  reason  will  permit;  and  when  the  necessity  arises,  he 


SCHOOLS  OF  ETHICS  3G3 

appeals  to  something  within  himself,  or  above  himself  and  above 
all  men,  for  the  warrant  to  disregard  and  even  to  transgress 
the  standard  of  morality  which  society  has  made  objective  and 
generally  accepted.  It  is  such  men  as  this  who  have  ever  been 
the  uplifters  and  saviors  of  social  morality.  They  have  been 
the  truest  expressions  and  supreme  developments  of  social 
morality  as  constituted  by  Nature." 

But  it  is  under  the  influence  of  the  sentiments  and  faiths  of 
religion  that  this  confidence  in  the  correspondence,  in  character, 
between  the  World-Ground  and  the  Ideal  of  morality  has  been 
strengthened  and  perfected.  It  is  the  religious  consciousness 
which  most  unequivocally  affirms  the  dictumi  of  the  philosopher 
Fichte :  "  The  World-Order  is  in  the  last  analysis  a  moral 
order."  The  cosmic  processes  which  have  combined  to  work 
out  an  evolution  of  moral  ideals,  as  realized  in  the  moral  up- 
lift of  human  society,  must  be  processes  essentially  controlled 
by  ethical  considerations. 

Undoubtedly,  there  are  many  human  experiences  which  seem 
to  conflict  with  the  conclusion  which  we  have  just  reached. 
Indeed,  the  conflict  between  the  realities  of  human  experience 
and  the  ideals  constructed  by  human  thought  and  imagination 
is  the  eternal  conflict.  According  to  the  myths  of  the  ancients 
and  the  theologies  of  modern  times,  this  conflict  was  waged  in 
invisible,  supermundane  regions  before  it  began  to  be  waged 
upon  earth.  The  theoretical  solution  of  the  conflict,  as  re- 
spects its  origin,  its  fullest  significance,  and  its  ultimate  issue, 
is  as  satisfactorily  treated  as  is  compatible  with  the  limitations 
of  human  knowledge,  when  it  is  shown  how  one  may  believe 
that  the  ultimate  Source  of  both  the  reality  and  of  the  ideals 
which  await  realization  is  one  and  the  same  World-Ground. 
This  World-Ground  is  a  personal  Will  that  is  pledged  and 
able  to  effect  the  progressive  realization  of  the  ideals  which,  too, 
owe  their  origin  and  historical  development  to  It.  In  a  word, 
the  same  Ethical  Spirit  who  inspires  the  moral  ideals  of  man, 
and  who  reveals  its  own  Nature  in  their  historical  evolution, 


364  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

will  secure,  and  is  securing,  the  realization  of  the  same  ideals  by 
this  process  of  evolution.  If  one  may  have  a  reasonable  faith 
in  this  conclusion ;  then  certainly,  however  severe  the  temporary 
conflict  may  be,  and  whether  this  conflict  be  raging  within  the 
soul  of  the  individual  or  within  the  social  organization,  its  final 
issue  and  fuller  significance  are  secure.  Well-founded  optimism 
makes  large  demands  on  religious  faith.  Only  when  one  is 
confident  that  there  is  indeed  a  Power  in  human  history,  which 
is  over  and  throughout  it  all,  and  which  effectively  makes  for 
righteousness,  can  one  hopefully  survey  the  long-existing  dis- 
proportion between  the  actual  conditions  of  humanity  and 
humanity's   own  highest  moral  ideals. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

^STHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

There  is  a  certain  attitude  of  mind  with  which  a  selected 
class  of  objects  is  contemplated  or  reflected  upon  that  resembles 
in  important  respects  the  moral  consciousness,  but  is  not  iden- 
tical with  it.  To  this  may  be  given  the  title  of  the  "  aesthetical 
consciousness."  And  since  it  involves  in  no  doubtful  way  the 
postulate  of  an  ideal  in  more  or  less  perfect  control  over  the 
forms  and  relations  of  really  existent  beings,  both  Things  and 
Selves,  the  nature  and  implicates  of  this  kind  of  consciousness 
require  treatment  at  the  hands  of  philosophjv  For  here  are 
subjective  conditions  and  states  which  make  a  persisted  and, 
on  the  whole,  a  gratefully  accepted  claim  to  tell  to  man  the 
truth  about  the  Nature  of  that  Ultimate  Reality  in  which  all 
particular  existences  have  their  origin,  explanation,  and  ground. 
The  confidence  of  humanity  that  Nature,  by  its  processes, 
recognizes  and  realizes  Eesthetical  ideas,  is  as  well-founded  in 
the  processes  of  human  reason,  as  are  the  laws  and  principles 
of  the  chemico-physical  sciences.  In  other  words,  the  senti- 
ments and  judgments  of  the  artistic  development  of  the  race 
may  as  truly  teach  us  what  the  Being  of  the  World  really  is, 
as  the  feelings  and  judgments  of  the  race's  scientific  develop- 
ment. 

In  any  satisfactory  study  of  the  philosophy  of  the  beautiful, 
whether  in  nature  or  in  art,  the  foundations  can  be  laid  se- 
curely only  by  beginning  with  psychological  analysis.  We  ask, 
then,  first,  this  question :  What,  as  a  matter  of  experience,  is 
the  so-called  festhetical  consciousness?  The  obvious  prelimi- 
nary answer  to  this  question  can  be  no  other  than  the  following : 
This  form,  like  every  other  form  of  the  experience  of  the  self- 

365 


3GG  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  must  have  all  the  essen- 
tial elements  of  mental  life  and  mental  activity,  blended  in 
some  particular  manner.  As  sentiment,  it  is  the  feeling  of  the 
beautiful — the  peculiar  feeling  inspired  by  objects  that  are 
judged  beautiful  (or  its  opposite).  As  judgment,  it  is  a  judg- 
ment about  what  is  (or  is  not)  beautiful.  As  realized  in  deeds 
of  will,  as  practical,  it  is  art,  or  the  setting  of  the  feeling  and 
judgment  of  beauty  into  some  concrete  object.  In  saying  this, 
however,  nothing  has  been  told  as  to  the  peculiar  qualities  of 
the  kind  of  consciousness  called  sesthetical;  but  its  psycholog- 
ical complexity  has  been  recognized  and  emphasized. 

In  the  analysis  of  moral  consciousness  it  was  found  that  all 
its  earlier  developments  are  chiefly  characterized  by  vague  and 
unreasoned,  though  by  no  means  irrational,  forms  of  feeling; 
and  that  the  moral  judgments  of  mankind  in  their  undeveloped 
form  are  scarcely  more  than  affirmations  of  certain  states  of 
ethical  feeling.  It  was  also  found  that  the  selection  of  objects 
to  which  these  feelings  attach  themselves  is  largely — indeed, 
at  first,  almost,  if  not  quite,  exclusively — determined  for  the 
individual  by  his  physical  and  social  environment.  In  the 
sphere  of  the  beautiful  the  dominance  of  feeling  is  even  greater 
than  in  the  sphere  of  conduct.  And  tlie  conditions  of  human 
social  evolution  afford  a  ready  explanation  of  why  this  is  neces- 
sarily true.  Departure  from  the  generally  accepted  opinions 
and  practices  with  reference  to  what  is  good  or  bad  from 
the  artistic  point  of  view,  can  be  tolerated  with  complacency 
by  the  community;  or  if  their  expression  is  going  to  bring 
discomfort  to  the  individual,  they  may  usually  be  easily  con- 
cealed by  the  individual.  The  case  is  obviously  not  the  same 
with  regard  to  opinions  and  practices  touching  the  good  and 
bad  of  conduct.  The  difference  is  not,  however,  by  any  means 
absolute.  For  the  suffering  inflicted  upon  the  individual  who 
departs  in  any  marked  manner  from  the  public  taste  in  matters 
of  dress  or  architecture,  or  furnishings,  may  be  even  more 
acute  than  are  those  of  the  man  who  violates  some  of  the  more 


^STHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  367 

firmly  established  customs  anxl  maxims  which  arc  understood 
to  be  worthy  to  control  the  conduct  of  everybody.  It  is  espe- 
cially in  matters  of  conduct  themselves  that  the  asthctically 
correct  and  the  morally  right  are  often  not  distinguishable. 
Savages  and  half-civilized  peoples  enforce  in  cruelly  rigorous 
fashion  the  feeling  of  obligation  to  conformity  in  matters  which 
appear  to  us  to  be  matters  of  mere  taste.  Communities  which 
considered  themselves  higlily  civilized  have  tolerated  and  even 
approved  of  murder  to  avenge  very  slight  breaches  of  etiquette 
in  the  treatment  of  an  equal  or  a  superior.  While  in  the  really 
most  civilized  countries  of  to-day,  the  laws  are  to  a  considerable 
extent  devised  so  as  to  secure  those  forms  of  behavior  which 
(defer  to  the  conventional  notions  of  propriety,  in  affairs  of  so- 
cial intercourse  which  are  essentially  quite  as  much  sesthetical 
as  the}^.  are  ethical. 

Three  things  should  be  noticed,  however,  about  all  this  class 
of  racial  habits.  First,  the  external  form  of  conduct, — its  pro- 
priety, or  politeness — is  no  adventitious  factor,  but  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  conduct  itself.  Second,  it  is  as  conduct,  and  so 
as  necessarily  subject  to  moral  feeling  and  judgment,  that 
offences  offered  to  sesthetical  regulations  are  so  sternly  judged. 
And,  third,  after  all,  the  sentiments  and  judgments  of  man- 
kind as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct  are  more  firmly  and 
definitively  fixed  than  are  their  sentiments  and  judgments 
respecting  what  is,  or  is  not,  in  good  taste  from  the  more  purely 
sesthetical  point  of  view.  When  we  come  to  what  has  been 
called  the  internalization  of  moral  judgment,  we  discover  a 
more  marked  difference  between  the  two.  For  faulty  sentiment 
and  misplaced  judgment  on  matters  of  art  have  never  been 
regarded  as  having  the  same  relation  to  the  quality  of  the 
Moral  Self  as  the  lack  of  the  virtues  of  courage,  constancy,  jus- 
tice, truth,  and  kindness.  Yet,  as  will  appear  more  clearly 
later  on,  the  fpsthetical  and  the  moral  development  and  per- 
fection of  human  nature  are  most  intimately  related.  Art  can- 
not be  indifferent  to  morality.     Morality  cannot  perfect  itself 


368  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

in  a  complete  indifference  to  artistic  form.  And,  the  ideals  of 
ethics  and  of  esthetics  blend  in  the  One  Ideal-Eeal  whom  re- 
ligious faith  worships  as  God. 

Beginning,  then,  with  the  emotional  factors  of  aesthetical 
consciousness,  we  note  first  their  pronounced  pleasure-pain 
quality.  This  fact  is  scarcely  expressed  satisfactorily  by  say- 
ing that  what  is  esteemed  beautiful  produces  agreeable  feelings; 
and  what  is  esteemed  not-beautiful,  or  positively  ugly,  affects 
men  with  feelings  that  are  more  or  less  disagreeable.  The  truth 
of  ordinary  experience  is  rather  to  be  expressed  as  follows: 
What  produces  in  men  a  certain  kind  of  agreeable  feeling,  that 
they  judge  to  be  really  beautiful ;  what  fails  to  produce  this 
agreeable  feeling,  but  does  not  produce  its  opposite,  that  they 
consider  aesthetically  indifferent;  and  what  produces  in  them 
the  opposite  disagreeable  kind  of  feeling,  that  they  judge  to 
be  ugly. 

Further  examination  of  the  emotions  awakened  by  objects 
which  are  classified  in  terms  derived  from  assthetical  conscious- 
ness, shows  them  to  share  in  the  characteristics  which  are 
possessed  in  common  by  all  human  emotions;  indeed,  it  might 
almost  be  said,  by  all  animal  forms  of  feeling,  ^sthetical 
feelings  have  an  obvious,  and  some  of  them  have  a  strong, 
sensuous  basis.  They  are  bodily  feelings — in  part,  but  only  in 
part.  This  sensuous  basis  is  most  pronounced  in  the  case  of 
those  emotions  with  which  the  mind  greets  the  sublime,  the 
awful,  the  tragic,  in  nature;  and  the  heroic,  the  mysterious,  the 
tragic  in  human  experience  and  human  history.  The  physiologi- 
cal functions  and  psycho-physical  factors  called  forth  by  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  beautiful  objects,  are  also  themselves  characteris- 
tically different  in  kind.  The  poses  and  movements  of  the  body 
and  the  corresponding  muscular  and  skin  sensations,  the  breath- 
ing, the  action  of  the  heart,  the  visceral  stirrings,  all  contribute 
to  modify  the  forms  of  emotion  which,  in  general,  may  be 
grouped  under  the  term  "aesthetical."  And  when  the  powerful 
influence  of  the  principle  of  association — whether  directly  over 


iESTHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  369 

these  feelings  or  indirectly  through  the  varied  grouping  of  the 
memories  and  ideas  evoked — is  fully  taken  into  the  account, 
then  one  cannot  fail  to  conclude  that  the  corresponding  dy- 
namic associations  in  the  cerebral  areas  are  the  physical  basis 
of  the  complex  states  of  consciousness  actually  experienced. 
[More  about  the  varieties  of  a3sthetical  emotion  thus  occasioned 
will  be  said  further  on.] 

^sthetical  emotions  are  seldom  a  perfect  blend  of  wholly 
agreeable  or  wholly  disagreeable  feelings.  There  are  indeed 
objects  which  are  entrancingly  beautiful,  which  wrap  the  soul 
away  from  all  semblance  of  anything  to  mar  the  pure  bliss  of 
sesthetical  enjoyment.  Eeligious  intuition  or  faith  produces 
such  experiences;  so  do  certain  sights  in  nature, — as,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Himalaya  Mountains,  or  some  poems,  or  musical 
compositions.  But  the  latter,  as  well  as  all  productions  of 
human  art,  more  rarely  give  an  unmixed  sesthetical  enjoyment. 
The  artistically  uncultivated  soul  is  usually  made  uneasy 
through  some  mixture  of  bodily  discomfort,  or  ungratified  de- 
sire, in  the  midst  of  its  happiness  at  viewing  the  beautiful  in 
nature  or  in  art.  And  every  one  knows  how  dissatisfied  is  the 
artist — the  more  so  the  greater  and  truer  artist  he  is — with  his 
own  art.  Where  sesthetical  judgment  is  cultivated,  while  the 
pleasures  in  the  beautiful  are  refined  and  increased,  the  sensi- 
tiveness to  flaws  and  imperfections  may  also  be  so  much  height- 
ened as  to  make  a  pure  joy  in  beauty  almost  impossible.  Thus 
most  tilings,  and  most  achievements  of  human  character  and 
human  skill,  when  thoughtfully  examined,  awaken  mixed  feel- 
ings, partly  pleasurable  and  partly  tinged  with  pain.  From 
the  psychological  point  of  view  it  is  pertinent  to  ask:  Why 
should  not  these  feelings  be  subject  to  all  the  variations,  de- 
grees of  intensity,  and  mixtures,  which  characterize  human 
emotional  states  of  every  other  kind  ? 

The  complex  sentiments  with  which  men  respond  to  aesthet- 
ical  impressions  have,  however,  two  classes  of  characters  which 
distinguish  them  from  all  emotional  disturbances  of  a  merely 


370  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

sensuously  agreeable  or  sensuously  disagreeable  quality.  A 
certain  universality  and  a  certain  rationality  are — however 
vaguely  and  dimly — evinced  in  tlie  way  in  whiili  men  look  upon 
each  others  a^sthetical  states.  The  suggestion  from  this  is  that, 
while  sensuous  tastes,  appetencies,  and  preferences  of  an  emo- 
tional character,  relate  to  what  "  in-f  act-is " ;  genuinely  ses- 
thetical  tastes,  appetencies,  and  preferences  belong,  the  rather, 
in  some  sort  to  the  sphere  of  "  that-whieh-ought-to-be."  You, 
for  example,  may  like  olives  and  I  may  like  them  not;  or  tlie 
liking  of  us  both  may  be  the  other  way.  In  either  case,  it  is  a 
mere  fact  to  be  explained  on  physiological  grounds,  or  on  the 
grounds  of  association  of  ideas.  One  man  may  get  more  enjoy- 
ment out  of  rag-time  music  or  the  ordinary  vaudeville  song; 
while  another  may  enjoy  and  approve,  as  a  matter  of  rational 
preference,  a  sonata  of  Beethoven  or  the  Erl-King  of  Schubert. 
This  preference,  too,  must  be  explained,  so  far  as  explanation 
is  possible  at  all,  as  a  result  partly  of  difference  in  constitu- 
tions and,  partly,  of  difference  in  habitual  associations.  But 
whoever  of  the  two  approves  of  the  higher  and  nobler  form  of 
art,  cannot  fail  to  look  upon  the  other  either  with  a  feeling 
of  pity  or  of  contempt  for  his  inferiority  as  judged  by  a  stand- 
ard which  is  rational,  and  which  ought  to  be  universally  ac- 
cepted by  rational  beings.  So  that  the  cultivation  of  festhetical 
tastes  is  a  matter  of  the  improvement  of  tlie  life  of  the  spirit; 
and  tliis  profound  truth  even  our  public-school  system  is  com- 
ing to  recognize.  The  motto :  "  De  gustihns  non  disputandum  " 
is  decidedly  not  true  of  aesthetical  tastes.  On  the  contrary, 
there  are  few  other  matters  about  which  men  think  it  more 
reasonable  to  argue  than  about  the  emotions  and  judgments 
with  which  things  and  deeds,  beautiful  or  ugly,  are  to  be  ad- 
mired and  approbated,  or  the  opposite:  It  is  not  fitting  for 
man,  being  rational,  even  to  gratify  his  appetites  or  natural 
desires  without  any  regard  for  aesthetical  eonsiileraiions.  And 
whoever  is  wholly  lacking  in  feeling  for  l)oautiful  objects  is 
almost,  or  quite,  as  deficient  in  an  essential  quality  of  man- 


iESTHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  371 

hood  as  is  lio  who  \r holly  lacks  moral  or  religious  feeling.  In- 
deed, all  tluve  forms  of  sentinient,  while  neither  one  is  abso- 
lutely identical  with  the  other,  are  in  the  experience  and  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  and  of  the  race,  indissolubly 
united. 

A  second  distinguishing  characteristic  of  aisthetical  senti- 
ment is  its  peculiar  objectivity.  Of  course,  every  feeling  of  the 
beautiful  is  somebody's  feeling;  it  is  an  emotional  disturbance 
occurring  in  the  conscious  life  of  some  subject.  As  such,  it 
testifies  unequivocably  to  a  certain  susceptibility  to  states  which 
have  pleasure-pain  qualities.  But  it  is  also  a  kind  of  sentiment 
which  is  aroused  as  an  apparent  appreciation,  of  a  rational 
and  quasi-obligatory  sort,  of  the  qualities  inherent  in  the  object 
which  calls  it  forth.  These  qualities  are  appreciated,  in  tiie 
way  of  feeling,  as  having  value,  or  worth,  belonging  to  them. 
In  this  respect  the  relation  of  the  object  to  the  feeling  subject 
— of  nature  and  art  to  you  and  to  me,  when  we  call  their 
products  beautiful — differs  in  an  important  way  from  either 
the  relations  of  sense-perception  or  of  ethical  appreciation. 
But  it  resembles  the  latter  much  more  than  the  former.  The 
orange,  for  example,  is  perceived  to  be  in  fact  sweet,  yellow, 
round,  large,  heavy,  etc.  That  is,  this  thing  affects  the  mind 
through  stimulating  the  organs  of  sense  in  particular  ways,  and 
arousing  in  consciousness  the  complex  resultant  of  present  sen- 
sations, images  of  past  sensory  impressions,  automatic  organic 
or  quasi-intellectual  processes,  etc.  For  the  mind  it  is  good  or 
bad,  has  worth  or  is  worthless,  according  to  its  uses.  But  this 
same  object  may  at  the  same  time  arouse  in  consciousness  cer- 
tain feelings,  to  account  for  which,  there  is  attributed  to  it 
either  beauty  or  ugliness.  This  kind  of  impression,  too,  may  in 
a  measure  depend  upon  changes  in  the  subject's  point  of  view; 
or  in  the  utilitarian  relations  of  the  object  as  viewed  from  that 
point  of  view.  Thus  even  a  malignant  tumor,  or  a  loathsome 
reptile,  may  be  beautiful  as  seen  through  the  microscope  of 
the  student  of  clinical  microscopy  or  of  biology.     And  Rem- 


372  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

brandt's  so-called  "  School  of  Anatomy "  is  one  of  the  most 
artistically  impressive  of  the  works  of  pictorial  art.  But  the 
moment  the  object  is  contemplated  from  the  unselfish  and 
purely  a^sthctical  point  of  view,  as  a  thing  of  beauty  simply,  it 
is  recognized  as  somehow  having  its  value,  or  worth,  "  in-itself." 
The  expression  of  the  subject's  feeling  toward  it  can  be  stated 
truthfully  in  no  other  way  than  to  say :  "  It  is  beautiful."  We 
should  no  more  tell  the  truth  about  the  way  it  really  appears 
to  us,  if  we  should  say,  "  The  whole  and  the  only  im.portant 
fact  is  that  I  am  affected  thus  and  so,  rather  than  that  the 
flower  or  the  star  is  actually  existent,"  than  if  we  should  say: 
"  All  there  is  of  this  experience  is  that  I — A.  B. — feel  agree- 
ably or  disagreeably  impressed,  without  any  reference  to  the 
qualities  possessed  by  the  object." 

Nor  is  the  relation  which  the  feeling  subject  sustains  to  the 
beautiful  object  precisely  like  that  involved  in  moral  appreciation 
and  admiration  (or  their  opposites).  There  is  the  worthy  or  un- 
worthy external  object ;  and  there  is  some  condition,  or  perform- 
ance, of  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  subject  with  refer- 
ence to  that  object.  If  the  condition,  or  the  performance  is 
subjective;  the  worthiness  or  unworthiness  is  also  subjective. 
But  no  artist,  on  taking  the  purely  sesthetical  point  of  view,  can 
reasonably  regard  his  own  product  in  a  wholly  subjective  way. 
He  may  be  proud  or  be  ashamed  of  his  achievement ;  this  feeling, 
however,  is  not  sesthetical,  but  personal,  however  true  to  the  re- 
sult of  his  endeavor  the  feeling  may  be.  But  if  the  artist  has 
really  made  a  beautiful  thing,  he  has  contributed  to  it  an  ob- 
jective value, — a  value  which  is  now  become  quite  independent 
of  him.  No  matter  who  chiselled  the  statue,  no  matter  who 
painted  the  picture,  no  matter  who  composed  the  symphony,  no 
matter  who  wrote  the  poem ;  the  one  purely  aesthetical  question 
to  be  answered  is  this :  "  Is  the  object  really  beautiful,  or  not  ?  " 

These  truths  regarding  the  intrinsic  nature  of  asthetical 
sentiments  have  been  boldly  stated,  at  the  risk  of  serious  mis- 
understanding.   There  is,  of  course,  no  use  in  denying  the  fact 


^STHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  373 

that  environment,  association,  and  education,  are  powerful  in 
the  development  and  control  of  these  sentiments  as  they  are  in 
all  human  affairs.  And  that  mere  things,  whether  so-called 
natural  or  constructed  by  man,  have  no  value,  and  no  possibility 
of  value  "  in-themselves,"  unless  they  share  in  that  spiritual 
life  which  man  knows  himself  to  possess,  and  in  the  posses- 
sion of  which  he  has  the  criterion  and  the  key  to  all  questions 
of  value ; — Why !  this  is  the  very  conclusion  we  are  trying  to 
prove. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  claim  is  justifiable  that  those  feel- 
ings of  humanity  which  have  the  characteristics  of  the  aBsthet- 
ical  sentiments — namely,  the  characteristics  of  objectivity  and 
universality — bear  a  creditable  witness  to  the  nature  of  Eeality. 
They  are  not  merely  subjective  states  of  the  individual  con- 
sciousness; mere  matters-of-fact  occurrence  in  a  fortuitous  suc- 
cession, called  the  "  stream  of  consciousness."  They  are  so 
connected  with  man's  rationality,  so  influential  in  determining 
his  cognitive  attitude  toward  the  world,  as  to  be  the  revealers  of 
essential  truths.  And  of  the  sentiment  of  beauty,  in  particular, 
it  may  be  claimed  that  it  is  a  rational  feeling  which  has  its 
correlate  in  the  constitution  of  things ;  in  that  system  of  actual 
existences  which  we  have  so  frequently  summarized  under  the 
abstract  general  term,  the  "  Being  of  the  World." 

^sthetical  consciousness  is,  however,  a  matter  of  more  or 
less  intelligent  and  deliberate  judgment.  But  the  precise  form 
which  aesthetical  judgments  take  (it  has  already  been  said) 
rests  even  more  upon  a  basis  of  unanalyzed  feeling  than  is  the 
case  with  the  moral  judgments.  Ask  the  average  man,  for  ex- 
ample, to  explain  why  he  considers  this  piece  of  conduct,  or 
quality  of  spirit, — such  as  courage,  justice,  kindness — to  be 
right,  and  its  opposite  wrong,  and  he  will  probably  make  shift 
to  give  you  some  kind  of  an  answer.  But  ask  the  same  man, 
why  he  considers  this  scene  in  nature,  or  this  painting,  or 
poem,  or  piece  of  music  beautiful,  and  he  is  altogether  likely 
to  remain  dumb  or  to  prevaricate.     In  case  he  gives  an  honest 


374  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

answer,  he  will  probably  defer  to  some  one  else's  judgment; 
or  he  will  recite  some  agreeable  experience  of  his  own  with 
which  the  beautiful  object  has  become  associated  in  thought. 
These,  however,  are  not  answers  to  the  question :  "  Why  is  it, 
the  object,  really  beautiful  ?  "  The  unexplained  fact  of  judg- 
ment is  accordingly  left  just  where  it  was  before  the  process 
of  searching  for  its  grounds  began.  It  is  beautiful  means:  It 
awakens  agreeable  aesthetical  feeling  in  me;  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  it  ought  to  awaken  the  same  kind  of  feeling  in  other 
minds. 

The  nature  of  nssthetical  judgment,  and  of  the  relations 
which  such  judgment  sustains  to  festhetical  feeling,  is  made 
clearer  by  the  fact  of  experience,  that  argument  al)out  the 
matter  can  only  produce  intellectual  assent;  but  that  argu- 
ment cannot,  of  itself,  produce  a  genuine  aesthetical  apprecia- 
tion, whether  in  the  form  of  sincere  feeling  or  of  intelligent 
and  deliberate  judgment.  One  mind  can,  indeed,  point  out  to 
another  the  qualities  of  the  beautiful  object;  and  when  these 
qualities  are  intuited  or  contemplated,  they  may  excite  the  ap- 
propriate and  genuine  fpsthetical  feeling,  and  may  thus  become 
reasons  for  an  intelligent  and  voluntary  aesthetical  judgment. 
But  this  is  all  that  argument  can  do.  The  truth  of  these  state- 
ments is  enforced  and  illustrated  by  the  methods  which  must 
be  followed  in  order  to  gain  or  to  impart  a  really  a?sthetical 
culture.  The  canons  of  the  different  arts  may  indeed  be  made 
matters  of  study.  Perhaps  they  may  be  so  laid  down  as  to 
justify  a  claim  on  their  part  to  constitute  a  sort  of  a  science; 
and  so  far  as  they  are  science,  they  can,  of  course,  be  taught. 
These  canons  are,  moreover,  not  simply  rules  for  the  produc- 
tion of  art-objects;  they  are  also  rules  for  the  appreciation  of 
beautiful  objects,  whether  natural  or  the  products  of  the  differ- 
ent arts.  But  learning  these  canons  cannot  make  an  artist;  in- 
deed, such  learning  has  no  tendency  to  make  an  artist.  Even 
less  does  it,  of  itself,  stir  any  mind  to  an  appreciation  of  the 
beautiful  in  nature  and  in  art.     The  most  that  such  learning 


iESTHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  375 

can  do  is  to  point  out  how,  and  wlicrc,  one  sliould  look  to  find 
the  several  characteristics  of  the  objectively  l)C'aviliful,  when  it  is 
presented  to  the  mind  for  its  appreciative  intuition  or  con- 
templation. Only  the  object,  that  is  in-itsclf  beautiful,  can 
arouse  and  win  for  itself  a  genuine  aesthetical  appreciation. 

In  forming  a  judgment  about  matters  of  aesthetical  concern- 
ment, but  especially  about  the  genuineness  of  the  claims  of 
any  object  to  be  considered  really  beautiful,  the  play  of  the 
imagination  is  confessedly  the  most  important  psychical  factor. 
Beauty,  both  in  nature  and  in  art,  appeals  to  the  imagination. 
For  its  appreciation,  in  all  its  forms  and  in  every  kind  of  art, 
the  imagination  must  be  quickened;  and  for  some  kinds  of  the 
beautiful  and  some  products  of  artistic  skill,  the  work  of  the 
imagination  must  be  greatly  elevated  and  enlarged.  This  gen- 
eral statement  is  equally  applicable  to  certain  scientific  facts, 
conceptions,  and  principles;  they,  too,  require  an  awakening  of 
the  imagination,  and  a  stretching  of  its  wings  beyond  all  that 
is  comn-on-place  and  ordinary,  if  the  heights  requisite  for  a 
true  apperception  and  a  dutiful  appreciation  are  somehow  to 
be  reached.  Indeed,  the  appreciations  with  which  the  discov- 
eries and  speculations  of  a  large  part  of  modern  science  are 
greeted,  are  much  more  asthetical  than  they  are  logical  or 
mere  matter-of-fact.  It  is  not  the  facts  which  so-called  science 
knows  that  so  much  stir  the  spirit :  it  is,  the  rather,  much  more 
what  science  imagines  and  asks  the  learner  to  make  real  for 
liimself  by  corresponding  activities  and  stretches  of  imagina- 
tion. All  the  appreciations  of  the  vastness,  the  order,  the  mys- 
tery, the  infinites,  the  infinitesimals,  the  achievements  of  the 
power  and  the  skill,  of  so-called  Nature,  are  ssthetical;  and 
they,  therefore,  make  boundless  demands  upon  the  imagination. 
If  we  were  to  take  these  aesthetical  elements,  and  also  the  prac- 
tical applications  and  contributions  to  the  welfare  of  mankind, 
out  of  physics  and  chemistry,  and  out  of  the  other  al- 
lied physical  and  natural  sciences,  the  remainder  would 
scarcely   contain   salt  enough  to  preserve   itself   in   the   open, 


376  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

economic  market  of  the  world  of  human  interests.  For  it  is 
as  an  artist,  and  a  lover  of  sublimity  and  of  the  other  kinds  of 
beauty,  that  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind  re- 
gards the  Nature  which  constitutes  its  spiritual  as  well  as 
physical  environment. 

There  are  these  important  differences,  however,  between  the 
more  purely  scientific  and  the  more  purely  aesthetical  activities 
of  the  human  imagination.  And,  first:  in  the  case  of  the 
latter,  the  existence  of  the  object  at  all  is  dependent  upon  the 
constructive  activity  of  imagination.  At  any  rate,  for  science 
as  well  as  for  ordinary  knowledge,  the  Thing  is  there :  it  is 
not  dependent  for  its  existence  upon  the  image-making  capac- 
ity of  the  knower.  For  although  this  capacity  is  implied  in 
every  act  of  sense-perception;  so  silent,  automatic,  and  rela- 
tively unobtrusive  is  its  work,  that  the  becoming  of  this  thing 
to  the  knower  as  his  object,  seems  in  no  respect  to  depend 
upon  his  constructive  imagination.  The  amoeba,  the  diatom, 
the  white  blood-corpuscle,  under  the  microscope,  really  is  what 
any  most  unimaginative  observer  may  see  that  it  is.  But  with 
the  "  Thing  of  Beauty,"  the  case  is  not  so.  The  unimaginative 
person  cannot  see  it  as  such  a  thing.  The  person  who  would 
see  the  object  as  beautiful  must  have  aroused  in  himself,  as 
subject,  a  species  of  sympathetic,  constructive  imagination. 
This  is  most  patent  in  respect  of  all  art-objects.  They  are,  as 
beautiful,  products  of  the  artist's  constructive  imagination.  If 
they  are  going  to  appear  beautiful  to  another  observer,  this 
other  observer  must  somehow  reconstruct  the  object  by  a  sympa- 
thetic activity  of  his  own  imagination.  He  must  not  simply 
observe ;  he  must  appreciate.  From  the  point  of  view  of  knowl- 
edge simply — whether  ordinary,  or  scientific — the  thing  re- 
mains unchanged;  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  art,  the 
thing  has  been  called  into  life  again,  made  real,  by  a  spiritual 
power  which  works  in  correspondence  to  the  same  kind  of 
spiritual  power  which  imparted  to  the  object  its  quality  of 
beautv  at  the  first. 


.ESTHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  377 

And,  second,  when  this  difference  on  the  part  of  imagina- 
tion in  the  two  attitudes  of  the  human  mind,  is  carried  over 
into  the  fields  of  science  and  of  art,  respectively^  wc  arrive  at 
a  larger  and  more  comprehensive  distinction.  Science  aims, 
primarily,  at  the  attainment  of  truth;  art  aims  at  the  produc- 
tion of  heauty.  The  ideals  of  science  a,ve  realized,  as  estimated 
by  its  peculiar  standard  of  values,  according  as  the  facts  and 
the  relations  of  the  facts,  are  more  accurately  stated,  on  the 
basis  of  their  being  more  comprehensively  and  minutely  known. 
The  ideals  of  art  are  realized,  as  estimated  by  its  peculiar 
standard  of  values,  according  as  there  are  more  beautiful 
things  in  the  world,  and  a  more  feeling-full  appreciation  and 
saner  judgments  of  their  worth  as  beautiful.  Yet  neither  in 
science  nor  in  art  can  truth  and  beauty  be  divorced.  For  the 
ideal  of  truth  itself  makes  a  powerful  appeal  to  assthetical  feel- 
ing. And  who  can  doubt  that  if  the  truth  were  more  com- 
pletely known,  and  faithfully  applied  to  the  art  of  living,  by 
all  men,  there  would  be  more  of  beauty,  and  of  joy  in  beauty, 
among  mankind  ?  For  who  can  doubt,  on  the  other  side,  that 
if  beauty  were  more  appreciated,  with  an  elevated  and  refined 
form  of  sentiment,  and  if  the  relations  of  life  were  regulated  and 
estimated  with  a  saner  and  more  cultivated  sesthetical  judg- 
ment, men  would  know  far  more  of  that  truth,  which  to  know 
and  practice  sets  men  free. 

From  the  more  comprehensive  philosophical  point  of  view  we 
are  compelled  to  notice  that  all  human  development,  whether 
in  science,  morals,  or  art,  results  in  attributing  more  of  spir- 
itual character  to  Nature,  considered  as  a  system  of  existing 
and  self-evolving  things  and  selves?  This  conception  of  a  uni- 
versal Nature  is  itself  chiefly  the  construction  of  human 
imagination, — placed  on  a  basis  of  knowledge  of  facts  and  of 
principles  generalized  from  the  facts,  but  stimulated  and  guided 
by  sesthetical  ideals.  Thus  the  mind  of  man  recognizes  the 
spirit  of  truth,  the  spirit  of  ethical  aspiration  and  self-control, 
and  the  spirit  of  beauty,  as  all  having  their  source  and  ground 


^78  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

in  the  Being  of  the  One  World.  To  speak  in  a  more  figurative 
way:  This  Being  is  conceived  of, — although  by  methods  which 
are  indirect  and  devious,  and  according  to  ideals  which  are 
often  shrouded  in  mystery — as  having  truth,  morality,  and 
beauty  upon  its  own  mind  for  a  care;  and  before  its  own  mind 
as  a  goal  progressively  to  be  realized.  But  such  a  conception  is 
pre-eminently  the  work  of  the  eesthetical  imagination. 

Some  fragment,  or  shape,  or  concrete  example,  of  the  aesthet- 
ical  ideal  may  be  said  to  determine  the  intelligent  and  delib- 
erate judgment  which  affirms  or  denies  the  qualities  of  beauty 
to  any  object ;  whether  something  in  nature  or  some  product  of 
any  one  of  the  various  arts.  But  the  imagination  which  con- 
structs the  ideal  does  not  directly  reveal  the  reasons  and  grounds 
for  the  aesthetical  judgment.  IIow  then  are  tlie  rational  ex- 
planations and  defenses  of  particular  judgments  about  mat- 
ters of  beauty  to  be  discovered  ?  In  otlier  words :  How  shall  it 
be  known,  or  even  presented  in  plausible  terms  and  in  such  a 
way  as  to  carry  a  measure  of  conviction,  that  the  object  which 
gives  s?stlietical  pleasure  to  an  individual  inind  is  really  worthy 
to  be  called  beautiful  by  everybody  ?  This  is  a  question  which 
cannot  be  answered  a  priori;  it  cannot  be  even  argued  on  purely 
logical  grounds.  Its  answer  requires  an  experimental  and  in- 
ductive examination,  with  a  view  to  elicit  and  expose  those 
judgments  which  have  in  fact  been  made,  and  wliich  arc  most 
universal  and  enduring  in  the  aesthetical  history  and  aesthetical 
evolution  of  the  race.  An  appeal  must  be  made  to  the  best 
aesthetical  taste.  Such  an  argument  does  not  proceed  from 
general  principles  defining  what  ought  to  be,  and  concluding 
what,  as  a  matter  of  truth  of  fact,  actually  is ;  it  proceeds,  the 
rather,  from  what  in  fact  has  been  and  still  is,  judged  to  be 
true,  and  concludes  with  a  summary  of  principles  defining 
what  ought  to  be.  To  say  the  same  thing  in  another  way : 
Logicians  and  philosophers  cannot  derive  by  reflective  thinking 
those  canons  of  beauty  which  artists  and  critics  of  art-objects 
ought  to  follow.     Nature  and  artists  make  beautiful  objects; 


^STHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  379 

mankind,  in  fact,  appreciate  and  approve  of  some  of  these  as 
pre-eminently  beautiful;  reflective  thinking  seeks  to  discover 
what  qualities  nature  and  art  actually  give  to  these  objects 
which  are,  in  fact,  judged  to  be  beautiful.  In  order,  therefore, 
for  philosophy  to  assure  itself  as  to  what  is  the  spirit  of  beauty, 
and  as  to  what  are  the  aesthetical  ideals  followed  by  nature  and 
by  art,  it  must  consult  the  actual,  concrete  judgments  of  the 
race.  Tliese  judgments  of  taste  are  expressed  in  two  ways:  first, 
in  opinions  as  to  what  objects  are  beautiful;  but  more  subtly 
and  effectively,  in  the  objects  themselves. 

If  now  we  ask  for  a  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  what  are  the 
qualities  of  beautiful  objects  in  general,  or  even  as  to  what 
particular  objects  are  judged  to  be  beautiful,  we  are  intro- 
duced to  a  wide  and  almost  unmanageable  diversity.  Indeed, 
the  diversity  of  opinions  in  this  realm  is  even  greater  than  in 
the  case  of  questions  relating  to  what  is  good,  what  not,  in 
conduct  and  in  character.  As  to  some  of  the  reasons  why  this 
is  so,  we  have  already  remarked  (see  p.  3G7f.).  Partly  in  the 
way  of  recalling  these  reasons,  and  partly  in  the  way  of  ex- 
panding them,  we  ascribe  the  greater,  seeming  uncertainty  of 
aesthetical  judgments: — (1)  to  the  great  difference  in  the  in- 
terests involved;  (2)  to  the  consequent  difference  in  the  stability 
of  the  forms  of  development;  and  also  (3)  to  the  essentially 
vague  character  of  the  aesthetical  feeling  which  so  powerfully 
influences  or  even  determines  the  judgment. 

In  this  connection  the  psychological  truth  must  be  recalled, 
that  aesthetical  judgments,  in  their  very  character  as  products 
of  judging  faculty  (or  intellectual  processes)  are  subject  to  all 
the  conditions  which  diversify,  even  to  the  point  of  contradic- 
tion, all  the  other  kinds  of  human  judgment.  These  condi- 
tions are  chiefly  the  following  four:  The  first  of  these  is  im- 
itation; for  although  the  really  aesthetical  attitude  toward  any 
object  in  nature  or  in  art  must  be  a  self-conscious  and  not 
a  merely  imitative  affair;  still  the  direction  of  the  judgment  of 
the  majority  is  undoubteedly  often  a  mere  matter  of  imitation. 


380  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Association  and  habit  are  other  well-recognized  factors  in  de- 
termining the  ffisthetical  judgments  of  even  the  most  unpreju- 
diced and  competent  judges.  And  indeed,  justly  and  reason- 
ably so.  For  the  qualities  of  beauty  in  the  object  cannot  be 
dissociated  from  those  qualities  which  appeal  to  other  tlian 
the  purely  aesthetical  interests  of  mankind.  Most  prominent 
among  such  associated  interests  are  the  moral  and  religious. 
But  economic  and  various  forms  of  social  interests  are  also  in- 
fluential in  determining  men's  judgments  as  to  what  is  beauti- 
ful, what  not.  Above  all  the  other  justifiable  causes  for  a  some- 
what wide  divergence,  and  even  conflict,  of  judgments  in  pesthet- 
ical  affairs  is  education.  Cultivated  taste  cannot,  indeed,  be 
produced  by  education  alone;  but  given  a  constitution  of  spirit 
sensitive  to  aesthetical  impressions,  and  education  can  develope 
such  a  taste. 

The  scepticism  with  respect  to  the  essential  nature  or  spirit  of 
beauty,  which  results  from  the  failure  to  find  an  agreement 
as  to  the  qualities  of  beautiful  objects  by  comparing  the 
opinions  of  the  multitude  and  of  the  various  authorities,  is 
much  mitigated  by  continued  inquiry  as  to  the  grounds  of 
these  opinions.  For,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  no  one  quality,  or 
simple  combination  of  few  qualities,  which  in  any  particular 
case  necessarily  conveys  the  title  to  beauty,  alike  to  each  and 
to  every  beautiful  thing.  There  may  be  several  kinds  of  the 
beautiful.  There  may  be  a  variety  of  features,  or  characters,  so 
incompatible  that  they  cannot  be  combined  in  any  one  object, 
but  which  if  they  can  get  themselves  contemplated  by  the  ap- 
preciative mind  from  the  right  point  of  view,  will  uniformly 
be  regarded  as  beautiful.  For  example,  there  may  be  one  kind 
of  beauty  which  requires  size  in  the  object;  and  there  may  be 
another  kind  of  beauty  which  can  find  expression  only  in  that 
which  is  small,  or  even  minute.  There  may  be  one  kind  of 
beauty  which  reveals  itself  best  in  a  natural  scene  or  artistic 
construction,  that  is  characterized  by  extreme  simplicity;  there 
may  be  another  kind  of  beauty  which  can  reveal  itself  only 


.ESTHETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  381 

when  clothed  with  the  ornate.  The  material  out  of  which  the 
object  is  constructed  may  also  have  something  quite  important, 
or  even  determinative,  to  say  as  to  what  kind  of  expression  to 
the  spirit  of  beauty  it  shall  be  chosen  to  make.  Thus  in  art, 
as  in  morals,  we  should  discover  a  far  greater  consensus  of 
opinion,  as  bearing  on  the  universal  and  permanent  laws  of 
sesthetical  judgment,  and  the  corresponding  canons  of  art,  if 
only  we  could  compel  all  men  to  take  the  same  point  of  view. 
We  should  find  in  art,  as  in  morality,  that  the  fundamental 
agreements  are  really  far  more  numerous  and  important  than 
the  seemingly  irreconcilable  differences,  if  only  all  the  causes  of 
misunderstanding  could  be  removed.  He  who  is  seeking 
the  truly  sublime  in  the  merely  pretty,  or  the  pretty  in  the 
sublime,  may'  be  disappointed,  and  indeed  must  be  disap- 
pointed, at  not  finding  it  there.  But  he  is  not  therefore,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  justified  in  declaring  any  particular  object 
ugly  or  lacking  in  the  qualities  of  the  spirit  of  beauty.  Nor 
can  he  justify  a  quarrel  with  his  fellow  who  is  looking  at  the 
same  object  from  a  different  but  equally  sesthetical  point  of 
view;  or,  who,  perhaps,  is  not  looking  upon  the  object  from  a 
truly  aesthetical  point  of  view  at  all.  Moreover,  however  high 
we  place  the  value  of  the  aesthetical  in  nature  and  in  human 
life,  it  has  no  heaven-imparted  right  to  pervert  the  truthful,  or 
to  dominate  the  moral,  or  even  to  disregard  the  economic  and 
social  interests  of  mankind.  In  general,  the  quickest  and  sur- 
est way  to  reconcile  disputes  about  matters  of  aesthetical  taste 
is  to  find  out  whether  the  disputants  are  thinking  and  talking 
about  precisely  the  same  thing. 

The  secret  of  the  beautiful,  the  true  and  abiding  spirit  of 
beauty,  however,  is  only  to  be  discovered  by  reflection  over  the 
qualities  of  those  objects  which  are  intuitively  felt  and  judged 
really  to  be  beautiful.  In  this  work  of  analysis,  and  of  reflec- 
tion upon  the  results  of  analysis,  the  art-object  is  likelier  to 
tell  us  the  truth  than  is  any  beautiful  thing,  or  scene,  in  nature. 
This  is  not  at  all,  of  course,  because  art-objects  are  more  bean- 


•^82  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tiful  than  are  the  constructi(ms  of  the  spirit  of  beauty 
which  is  in  Nature.  It  is  because  man  worlds  to  produce  the 
beautiful  in  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  way.  In 
the  sphere  of  the  aestlietical,  as  in  every  other  sphere,  the  Self 
knows  itself  more  immediately  and  fully  than  it  knows  the 
Nature  whose  child  the  Self  is.  It  is  true  that  the  highest 
geniuses  in  art,  as  in  science,  war,  government,  and  philosophy, 
and  perhaps  even  more  than  in  any  of  the  other  fields  of  human 
achievement,  do  not  fully  comprehend  their  own  inspirations  or 
clearly  picture  the  ideals  tliey  feel  themselves  someliow  impelled 
to  follow.  But  it  is  also  true  tliat  the  greater  the  real  genius 
is,  in  all  fields  of  human  achievement,  the  better  does  he  un- 
derstand his  subject  and  himself  in  relation  to  it.  And  no  man 
knows,  or  can  know,  the  secret  workings  of  natural  forces 
in  their  progressive  realization  of  nature's  ideals,  witli  the 
same  inwardness  and  penetrating  spiritual  appreciation  with 
which  he  may  know  the  forces  working  within  himself.  There 
are  then  three  reasons,  or  three  ways  of  stating  essentially  one 
reason,  why  the  inquirer  Avho  is  seeking  to  discover  the  essen- 
tial spirit  of  beauty,  must  turn  aside  briefly  to  consider  what 
kinds  of  art  there  are,  and  how  the  workers  in  these  arts 
actually  proceed  in  order  to  make  beautiful  things.  For  (1) 
the  conscious  mind  may  know  what  it  intends  to  put  into  the 
beautiful  object  in  order  to  make  it  seem  beautiful;  (2)  the 
conscious  mind  may  discover,  in  part  at  least,  what  it  is  in  an 
art-object  made  by  others  which  makes  it  seem  beautiful;  and 
thus  (3)  the  conscious  mind  may  reason  from  its  more  im- 
mediate experience  with  these  objects  to  the  more  hidden  secrets 
of  the  beautiful  in  nature,  in  a  sort  of  analogical  way. 

It  remains  only  to  notice  in  this  connection  that  factor  in 
assthetical  consciousness  which  is  called  the  Will,  or  the  atti- 
tude of  the  active  Self  toward  the  beautiful  object,  in  nature 
and  in  art.  This  is  an  attitude,  primarily,  of  desire  of  pos- 
session,— not  selfishly,  or  in  order  that  it  may  minister  to  the 
passion,  pride,  or  self-esteem  of  the  individual,  but  because  of 


^STIIETICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  3S3 

the  intrinsic  worUi  of  the  object  itself.  The  beggar  who  is 
admitted  without  charge  into  the  public  park  or  museum  may 
possess  the  statue;  or  the  picture,  much  more  truly  and  com- 
pletely than  the  millionaire  who  can  purchase  it  and  shut  it  up 
wiUiin  the  walls  of  his  own  house.  x\nd  to  shut  the  people 
away  from  the  beauties  of  the  surrounding  sky,  or  sea,  or 
plain,  or  mountain  range,  or  to  deny  them  all  possession  of  the 
loveliness  of  sunlight,  and  foliage,  and  flower,  is  a  crime  for 
which  no  economic  advantages  to  the  few  can  sulhciently  atone. 
For  this  desire  to  possess  the  beautiful  object,  as  itself  intrin- 
sically vahiable  and  a  benefit  to  the  spirit,  denies  no  ecjual 
right  to  anyone  else;  and,  indeed,  it  wishes  that  tlie  same  de- 
sire of  possession  should  be  awakened  and  gratified  in  all  man- 
kind. The  will-full  attitude  of  the  Self  toward  the  beautiful 
object  is  also,  in  some  sort,  one  of  submission  and  devotion. 
Especially  is  this  true  of  the  sublimely  beautiful  in  its  effects 
upon  the  will.  And,  finally,  the  attitude  of  self-denial  in  view 
of  the  prospect  of  contributing  something  to  enrich  the  store 
of  the  world's  beauty  has  been  a  powerful  motive  with  all  the 
most  masterful  artists  in  the  history  of  man's  artistic  devel- 
opment. In  this  respect  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining 
mind  takes  its  stand  toward  tlie  ideal  of  beauty  in  the  same 
spirit  in  which  it  takes  its  stand  toward  all  its  other  ideals. 
The  ideal  is  intrinsically  valuable;  it  has  worth  in-itself.  And 
since  it  has  this  worth,  it  lays  upon  the  human  will  an  obliga- 
tion to  do  something  in  order  more  fully  to  give  the  ideal  a 
place  in  reality.  Nor  do  we  hesitate  to  announce  a  conclusion 
which  we  shall  try  still  further  to  elucidate  and  defend :  In 
every  heautiful  object.  Nature  as  a  Reality  of  spiritual  char- 
acter and  spiritual  worth,  reveals  itself  to  human  nature,  and 
lays  a  sort  of  mandate  upon  the  human  will. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  ARTS:   THEIR  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE 

The  proposal  to  appeal  directly  to  those  objects  which  are 
created  and  esteemed  to  be  beautiful  by  the  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind  of  man,  in  order  to  discover  the  spirit 
of  beauty  which  they  incorporate,  assumes  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  these  objects  have  certain  characteristics  in  common. 
In  material,  size,  form,  color,  method  of  addressing  the  senses 
and  arousing  sesthetical  feeling  and  judgment  through  the  char- 
acter of  their  composition,  beautiful  things  in  nature  differ 
indefinitely.  In  these  respects,  art-objects  also  are  exceedingly 
varied.  In  some  respects,  however,  both  the  creations  of  nature 
and  those  of  art  must  be  alike ;  otherwise,  how  could  they  all  be 
called  beautiful  ?  This  assumption  of  common  characteristics 
is  further  strengthened  by  the  following  considerations :  In  the 
first  place,  all  art-objects  are  the  products  of  aesthetical  feeling 
and  imagination  on  the  part  of  those  who  create  them — acting 
in  a  plan-ful  way.  The  artist,  in  no  matter  what  kind  of 
material  or  branch  of  the  arts,  must  be  moved  and  guided  by 
the  sentimjent  of  beauty.  There  must  also  be  something  of 
the  teleological  in  the  idea  which  he  wishes  to  embody  in 
the  material.  Plan  is  particularly  conspicuous  in  some  kinds  of 
art, — especially  so  in  landscape-gardening,  architecture,  and 
sculpture.  Even  in  music  the  comparative  absence  of  it  in 
the  latest  music  is  a  distinct  disadvantage  to  its  genuine 
aesthetical  quality.  In  his  Critique  of  Judgment — the  work  in 
which  Kant  developed  his  aesthetical  and  theological  opinions 
in  a  somewhat  artificial  conjunction — his  ruling  idea  is  the 
teleological.     Beauty  in  the  object  implies  some  sort  of  plan. 

Again,  since  all  art-objects  are  beautiful  and  are  intended  by 
their  maker  to  appeal  to  aesthetical  feeling  and  imagination  in 

384 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       385 

other  minds,  they  must  all  have  something  coinmon  to  their 
respective  plans,  in  order  to  make  this  appeah  The  stirring 
of  feeling,  the  activity  of  the  creative  image-making  faculty, 
in  response  to  the  beauty  of  the  art-object,  mav  be  of  a  special 
character  in  each  individual  case.  But  it  is,  nevertheless,  a 
kind  of  response  common  to  humanity.  Generic  characteristics 
must  belong  to  the  things  that  can  excite  mental  attitudes 
common  to  the  race.  Only  qualities  common  to  all  that  is 
beautiful  in  the  object,  could  appeal  to  mental  attitudes  that  are 
common  to  all  subjects,  who  observe  and  appreciate  the  object. 
There  must  he  something  in  the  one  object  which  corresponds 
to  the  unity  of  the  one  self-conscious,  appreciative  human  mind. 

And,  finally,  we  note  that,  in  order  to  become  objective, 
the  artistic  sentiment  and  imagination  must  take  concrete 
form  in  some  kind  of  material.  The  material  may  be  either 
so  substantial  and  enduring  as  stone,  or  bronze,  or  steel;  or 
it  may  be  so  unsubstantial  and  fleeting  as  tones  and  words. 
But  successions  and  combinations  of  tones  and  words  must  have 
qualities  in  common  with  the  shapes  and  relations  of  things 
made  of  stone,  or  bronze,  or  steel,  if  they  are  all  alike  to 
awaken  aesthetical  feeling  and  control  gesthetical  judgment. 
And,  we  are  only  repeating  from^  a  somewhat  changed  point 
of  view,  what  has  already  been  referred  to  before,  when  we  call 
attention  to  the  significance  of  this  important  fact :  It  is  intui- 
tion and  contemplation  in  the  presence  of  the  beautiful  object, 
rather  than  reasoning  about  it,  which  begets  the  genuinely 
aesthetical  appreciation  of  its  beauty. 

Any  attempt  to  discover  the  most  logical  Classification  of 
the  Arts,  is  met  by  somewhat  of  the  same  difficulties  as  those 
which  everywhere  obstruct  similar  inquiries.  In  the  case  of 
the  arts,  however,  they  have  come  quite  conclusively,  to  classify 
themselves.  This  they  have  done  by  a  process  of  development, 
which,  on  the  one  hand,  has  defined  the  appropriate  spheres 
and  pointed  out  the  proper  limits  of  each  one;  and  which  has, 
on  the  other  hand,  enabled  certain  of  them  to  co-operate  with, 


386  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

or  to  supplement,  each  other  in  a  more  intelhgent  and  effective 
way.  Here  reference  might  be  made  to  the  history  of  the  de- 
velopment of  dancing,  music,  poetry,  and  the  drama;  or  of 
painting,  sculpture,  and  architecture. 

But  we  are  not  now  interested  in  the  arts  from  the  historical 
or  the  practical  points  of  view;  we  are  studying  the  art-object 
reflectively,  with  a  view  to  learn  what  it  can  tell  us  about  its 
own  essential  qualities  that  may  help  to  discover  the  more 
hidden  secrets  of  the  spirit  of  beauty.  Any  principle  of  classi- 
fication which  will  best  assist  the  mind  in  this  search,  will  be 
most  satisfactory  for  the  present  purpose.  Such  a  principle  is 
found  in  the  character  of  the  Material  employed  by  the  different 
arts  for  the  construction  of  the  object  which  is  to  arouse  appre- 
ciative aesthetical  feeling  and  command  an  approving  aBsthet- 
ical  judgment.  Since  all  art  must  express  itself  in  some  kind 
of  material,  the  kind  of  art,  as  expression  (both  in  manner 
and  degree)  depends  chiefly  upon  the  kind  of  material.  And 
the  quality  of  the  material  which  chiefly  determines  its  relation 
to  the  artistic  idea  and  plan,  is  its  plasticity,  or  mouldableness. 
As  an  affair  of  physics,  different  materials  can  be  handled,  and 
shaped,  and  made  expressive  of  ideas,  in  a  planful  way,  only  in 
accordance  with,  and  in  obedience  to,  their  different  physical 
properties  and  physical  relations.  As  an  affair  of  aesthetics, 
these  same  different  materials,  on  account  of  their  different 
physical  properties  and  relations,  can  be  made  expressive  of  the 
sentiments  and  ideals  of  beauty,  in  a  planful  way;  but  only  in 
different  degrees  and  various  forms.  Some  things  will  receive 
and  embody  certain  aspects  of  the  spirit  of  beauty  as  other 
things  will  not.  Some  materials  will  express  the  spirit  of 
beauty  in  a  rich,  revealing  way,  as  other  materials  cannot.  The 
more  plastic  the  matter,  the  more  perfectly  can  the  spirit  mould 
it  to  an  expression  of  the  spirit's  ideal. 

Beginning,  then,  with  those  kinds  of  art  which,  on  account 
of  a  lack  of  plasticity  in  the  material  stand  lowest,  w-e  ask  of 
Landscape-Gardening,  what  qualities  and  ideals  of  beauty  it 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE      387 

intends  to  express.  But  at  once  two  considerations  come  to  the 
fore  which  elevate  this  art  from  other  points  of  view,  above  the 
standing  assigned  to  it  in  the  classification  which  has  been 
adopted.  For  since  landscape-gardening  deals  with  natural 
objects,  its  very  material,  before  art  has  shaped  it,  has  those 
qualities  of  beauty  which  are  vaguely  summed  up  in  the  word 
"  lifelikeness  "  (Lehendigheit) .  In  this  art,  nature  puts  liv- 
ing things  at  the  disposal  of  the  self-conscious  and  self-deter- 
mining mind,  for  its  arrangement  in  sesthetical  forms.  More- 
over, in  certain  cases  it  is  possible  to  approach  by  art  those 
conditions  of  magnitude  which  nature  employs  to  stir  man  to 
the  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  which  is  also  sublime. 

In  general,  however,  and  especially  under  the  conditions  of 
modern  civilization,  the  sesthetical  feelings  and  ideas  which 
can  be  expressed  by  this  form  of  art  are  limited  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  material.  There  are  two  groups  of  qualities  and 
relations,  which  two  markedly  different  styles  of  landscape- 
gardening  are  fitted  to  express.  And  although  these  styles 
have,  each  one,  their  advocates,  who  sometimes  even  refuse  to 
see  any  beauty  in  each  other's  work,  we  must,  as  philosophically 
inclined,  admit  the  claims  of  both.  One  of  these  styles  gives 
emphasis  to  the  expression  of  the  ideally  orderly  and  harmoni- 
ous; but  the  other  prefers  to  emphasize  the  ideally  free,  and 
graceful  because  free.  Close  to  the  borders  of  each  runs  the 
risk  of  over-stepping  the  limits  and  so  of  losing  the  coveted 
assthetical  effect.  Too  much  attempt  at  ordering  things,  too 
obvious  an  effort  to  bring  all  into  relations  of  exact  proportion 
and  into  a  forced  agreement  or  balance  of  parts,  runs  the  risk  of 
exciting  feelings  of  distaste  for  artificiality  and  pettiness.  But 
neither  can  an  excessive  freedom,  whether  of  self-propagation, 
or  of  self-nourishment,  or  room  for  growth,  be  allowed  to 
natural  objects  if  they  are  to  be  combined  in  the  art  of  land- 
scape-gardening. However  much  the  mind  may  rejoice  for  a 
time  in  the  unchecked  wildness  of  the  tropical  forest,  this  revel 
of  nature  cannot  be  imitated  precisely  in  human  art.     The 


388  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

landscape-garden  may,  indeed,  leave  some  spots  to  "  rim  wild  " 
in  a  relative  way;  and  yet  the  complete  license  of  nature  can 
never  be  profitably  imitated,  without  restrictions,  in  a  cultivated 
portion  of  ground.  Art,  moreover,  gives  preference  to  some 
natural  products  rather  than  to  others;  it  must  protect  its 
selections  against  their  natural  enemies.  Here  the  human  art 
must  make  nature  realize  its  own  ideal,  according  to  the  scale 
and  under  the  conditions  which  inevitably  belong  to  all  land- 
scape-gardening, even  better  than  would  nature  if  left  wholly 
to  herself.  Therefore,  art  selects  some  trees  and  shrubs  and 
flowers,  rather  than  others;  it  selects  some  branches  of  each 
to  survive  rather  than  others.  In  the  minute  and  highly  special- 
ized form  of  this  art  in  Japan,  for  example,  it  directs  the 
manner  of  growth  of  each  branch,  and  determines  the  indi- 
vidual twigs  and  even  the  leaves  that  shall  be  allowed  to  de- 
velope  upon  each  twig. 

Tliere  would  seem  then  to  be  some  resemblance  between  the 
qualities  of  tliis  kind  of  art-objects  and  the  different  virtues. 
They  not  infrequently  appear  to  come  into  a  kind  of  conflict; 
and  then  a  choice  must  be  made  as  to  how  best  to  compromise 
the  claims  of  each  without  violating  the  spirit  of  the  ideal. 
Order  and  harmony,  freedom  and  luxuriance  of  growth, — all 
are  beautiful,  as  embodied  in  the  object  of  art;  somewhat  as 
courage  and  wisdom,  justice  and  kindness,  must  be  incorpo- 
rated into  the  moral  texture  of  the  Self.  From  each  of  these 
leading  motifs  may  be  derived  a  considerable  number  of  sub- 
ordinate rules  such  as  control  the  orderly  arrangement  of 
spaces;  the  due  proportion,  or  balance,  or  contrast,  of  shapes 
and  magnitudes;  the  harmony  and  proper  amounts  and  rela- 
tions of  the  coloring  of  the  natural  objects,  etc.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  certain  license,  disregard  of  conventions,  and  even 
appearance  of  freakishness,  if  it  does  not  go  to  excess  and  if 
it  manages  to  reveal  the  signs  of  a  subtle  but  no  less  real 
regard  for  aesthetical  effects,  is  by  no  means  without  a  beauty 
of  its  verv  own. 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       389 

The  conditions  which  the  character  of  the  material  with 
respect  to  its  plasticity  impose  upon  the  spirit  of  beauty  in  the 
art  of  Architecture  are  markedly  different  from  those  which 
prevail  in  landscape-gardening.  They  are  also,  on  account  of 
the  very  nature  and  final  purpose  of  this  art,  complicated  wath 
other  physical,  economic,  and  social  conditions.  For  men  do 
not  build  houses  for  themselves,  any  more  than  they  make 
canoes  or  bows  and  war-clubs,  solely  or  chiefly  to  express  and 
gratify  the  sentiment  of  beauty.  In  understanding  where  the 
art  of  architecture  begins  to  control  the  merely  utilitarian  con- 
siderations of  the  builder,  analysis  must  consider  the  prob- 
lem of  architecture.  What  is  the  principal,  practical  question, 
the  solution  of  which  man  has  before  him  when  he  builds  a 
structure  which  he  wishes  to  have  give  aesthetical  enjoyment? 
He  must  build,  for  safety  and  for  comfort.  He  instinctively 
or  deliberately  imparts  to  what  he  builds  some  expression  of 
appreciation  for  beauty.  Building  becomes  architecture  when 
the  structure  is  made  riot  only  to  be  safe  and  serviceable,  but 
to  have  such  an  appearance  as  to  express  and  excite  aesthetical 
sentiment. 

From  the  utilitarian  point  of  view,  the  one  essential  thing 
about  all  buildings,  under  whatever  conditions  of  climate  and 
for  whatever  social  purpose,  and  relatively  independent  of  eco- 
nomical considerations,  is  the  roof.  When  primitive  man 
crawls  out  of  his  cave,  or  descends  from  his  tree,  he  proceeds 
to  make  for  himself  some  shelter  for  his  head  against  the  sun- 
shine and  the  storm.  And  now  the  logic  of  physics  leads  by  a 
direct  and  inescapable  route  to  the  main  principle  which  gov- 
erns the  art  of  architecture.  The  steps  of  this  logic  may  be 
recited  briefly  in  the  following  way:  Every  roof  is  a  load  and 
the  force  of  gravitation  is  unceasingly  bearing  it  down  toward 
the  ground ;  to  resist  this  force,  the  load  of  the  roof  must  some- 
how be  supported ;  the  way  in  which  the  load  of  the  roof  is 
supported,  and  the  subordinate  but  important  purposes  served 
by  the  supports,  whether  to  screen  the  inmates  against  weather, 


390  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

or  to  conceal  domestic  procedures,  or  to  guard  the  contents 
from  thieves,  etc.,  chiefly  determines  the  whole  form  of  the 
structure;  and,  accordingly,  the  different  styles  of  architecture 
and  the  rules  of  their  practice  with  respect  to  aesthetical  de- 
tails, depend  in  the  last  analysis  upon  the  character  of  the  roof 
as  a  load  and  upon  the  way  in  which  this  load  is  supported. 
Since — and  especially  in  all  the  more  permanent  and  strong 
structures — the  supports  are  themselves  a  load,  the  foundations 
of  the  building,  and  the  arrangement  upwards  and  sidewise, 
of  the  supporting  sides,  become  a  dominant  architectural 
problem,  as  well  as  a  problem  in  sound  and  safe  building. 

A  building  is  something  to  be  seen,  if  it  is  to  produce  an 
agsthetical  effect.  It  appeals  to  the  mind  through  the  eye,  and 
not  through  the  ear,  as  do  music  and  poetry.  If  it  is  to  produce 
the  maximum  aesthetical  effect,  it  must  be  capable  of  being  aes- 
thetically appreciated  as  a  whole;  and  this  requires  that  at 
least  one,  and  if  possible  two  of  its  sides,  should  be  seen  in 
their  entirety  at  the  same  time.  But  here  we  must  remember 
that  seeing  an  object  in  its  entirety  "  at  the  same  time  "  is  not 
a  mathematical,  inuch  less  a  physically  instantaneous  affair. 
To  use  an  appropriate  figure  of  speech:  the  eye  must  be  able 
to  "  sweep  over  "  the  whole  structure,  back  and  forth  if  need 
be,  and  to  appreciate  the  main  features  of  the  different  parts 
so  as  to  make  a  synthesis  of  them  in  their  respective  places  and 
mutual  relations.  This  first  total  impression  must  be  com- 
pleted by  the  roving  vision  within  the  limits  of  the  time  neces- 
sary for  the  synthetic  activity  of  the  imagination.  Too  short, 
or  too  long,  mars  the  beauty  of  the  first  total  impression.  In 
great  and  elaborate  objects  constructed  by  this  form  of  art, 
contemplative  study  is  both  necessary  and  possible,  in  a  pecu- 
liar way.  For  the  building  stands  there — the  same  day  after 
day,  and  perhaps  age  after  age.  Each  survey  of  it,  however, 
is  a  particular  and  fleeting  achievement  of  some  self-conscious 
mind;  it  cannot,  therefore,  be  beautiful  to  such  a  mind  unless 
it  complies  with  the  unchanging  conditions  of  its  visual  activi- 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       391 

ties  when  in  use  from  the  aesthetical  point  of  view.  For  this 
reason  there  are  certain  physiological  and  psycho-physical  con- 
ditions, witli  their  allied  forms  of  tpsthetical  feeling,  for  a  lack 
of  the  knowledge  of  which  or  because  (he  physical  and  eco- 
nomical conditions  imposed  upon  them  make  it  impossible  to 
comply  with  what  they  do  know  to  be  demanded,  architects 
are  constantly  making  grave  ffisthetical  blunders.  It  would 
be  foreign  to  our  purpose  to  enter  upon  details  here;  for  we 
are  striving  to  discover  only  tlie  main  features  wliich  the  spirit 
of  beauty  impresses  upon  its  objects,  alike  in  every  one  of 
the  arts.  Some  few  general  considerations  will,  however,  con- 
tribute to  the  success  of  our  search.  Among  such  considera- 
tions are  the  following:  (1)  The  foundations  of  the  building 
should  appear;  and  they  should  appear  to  be  what,  from  the 
builder's  point  of  view,  they  really  must  be-^foundationi, 
firm  and  strong,  No  building  made  with  human  hands  should 
seem  to  grow  out  of  the  ground,  like  a  merely  natural  struc- 
ture. Hence  the  architectural  device  of  employing  different 
materials,  and  larger  sizes  of  similar  materials,  for  the  founda- 
tions; or  of  marking  them  off  by  a  water-table,  or  other  signs. 
(3)  So,  too,  wherever  it  is  possible,  the  roof  should  be  seen  as 
a  load;  and  if  it  is  the  case  of  a  massive  structure,  the  roof 
should  appear  as  being  the  great  load  that  it  really  is.  But 
above  all,  every  part  of  this  load  should  not  only  he  sufficiently 
supported,  hut  it  should  seem  to  he  sufficiently  supported.  To 
say,  as  did  my  friend,  the  engineer,  of  a  certain  church,  that 
he  "  never  could  understand  why  the  roof  did  not  fall  "  is  to 
condemn  the  structure  from  the  artistic  as  well  as  from  the 
physical  point  of  view.  (3)  The  perception  and  appreciation 
of  the  form,  arrangement,  and  significance  of  the  various  visible 
parts,  should  be  made  obvious  and  an  achievement  to  be  gained 
without  difficult  and  disagreeable  psycho-physical  impressions. 
The  eyes  move  freely  together  over  the  fields  that  may  be  cov- 
ered along  both  the  horizontal  and  the  vertical  axes;  but  they 
do  not  take  kindly  to  the  task  of  working  together  in  oblique 


392  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

directions.  Eepetitions  of  forms  that  are  integral  parts  of  the 
structure,  or  of  different  species  of  ornamentation,  must  there- 
fore occur,  in  the  main,  in  series  up  and  down,  or  right  and  left, 
if  they  are  to  be  synthesized  into  an  agreeable  and  appreciative 
aesthetical  impression.  One  corrollary  from  this  rule  is  illus- 
trated by  the  case  of  the  modern  sky-scraper  which  must  be 
seen,  if  seen  as  a  whole  at  all,  from  the  opposite  of  a  narrow 
street.  Only  by  grouping  its  many  stories,  under  a  few  general 
features  of  the  fagade,  can  its  inherent  tendency  to  a  painful 
ugliness  of  monotony,  be  in  a  measure  avoided.  But  if  this 
is  done,  a  touch  of  sublimity — somewhat  artificial  and  unlike 
the  sublimity  of  nature  or  of  the  moral  hero,  it  is  true — may 
be  imparted  to  such  a  structure. 

In  what  has  already  been  said  about  the  art  of  architecture, 
it  has  been  made  plain  how  the  spiritual  qualities  of  strength, 
planful  ordering  and  harmony,  or  the  triumph  of  mind  over 
what  appears  as  dead  matter  to  give  it  expressive  form,  domi- 
nates the  structure  of  the  object.  The  object  is  made  beautiful 
just  so  far  as  it  expresses  these  qualities  by  moulding  the  stuff 
given  to  the  artist's  hand.  In  a  more  impressive  way  the  same 
truth  is  taught,  when  it  is  considered  how  the  main,  different 
styles  of  architecture  seize  upon,  and  emphasize  by  the  forms 
of  expression  which  they  contrive,  the  different  main  kinds  of 
beauty,  as  these  will  be  named  for  recognition  in  the  follow- 
ing chapter.  For  example,  there  is  the  beauty  of  sublimity, 
which  requires  size  and  especially  height  in  the  structure,  as 
in  the  Gothic  cathedral ;  here  the  load  of  the  roof  visibly  towers 
aloft,  but  is  amply  supported  on  the  outside  by  buttresses, 
and  within  by  pillars  that  are  clusters  of  supporting  partners  in 
the  difficult  achievement,  and  which  spread  out  under  the  roof 
their  uplifted  liands  with  many  fingers,  as  thougli  the  task  were 
accomplished  easily  and  with  a  kind  of  aerial  joy.  But  there 
is  also  the  beauty  which  is  chiefly  characterized  by  symmetry 
and  proportion.  In  this  style  of  architecture  the  Greeks  ex- 
celled; and  nothing  since  has  been  done  to  equal  them;  for  all 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       393 

that  lias  since  been  done  has  been  copied  or  l)orrowed  from  them. 
In  this  style,  the  roof  is  frankly  displayed  at  the  front  as  a  load 
which  rests  upon  the  architrave;  and  then  beneath  this  is  the 
row  of  pillars  which  appear  quite  competent  and  quietly  secure 
in  their  task  of  supporting  the  architrave.  Justness  of  pro- 
portion, simplicity  and  symmetry, — all  the  rational  qualities 
of  the  calm  and  philosophic  mind — are  expressed  and  culti- 
vated by  these  art  objects.  The  ornamentation  is  confined 
to  those  lines  of  the  building  where  it  can  bo  most  easily  seen; 
it  is  significant  of  the  purpose  of  the  structure;  it  is  kept  un- 
der a  control  which  corresponds  with  the  life  and  intent  of 
the  whole.  But  the  kinds  of  beauty  which  are  especially  dis- 
tinguished by  the  qualities  of  grace,  or  by  a  certain  wild  and 
luxuriant  outburst  of  the  vital  forces  that  strive  to  find  ex- 
pression in  moulding  to  their  uses  even  the  materials  most  lack- 
ing in  a  natural  plasticity,  have  also  their  appropriate  style 
of  architecture.  Such  is  the  Moorish  architecture;  but,  per- 
haps, above  all,  the  palaces  and  tombs  of  the  Muhammadan 
conquerors  of  Northern  India.  It  might  seem  that  marble 
and  other  harder  stones  were  not  appropriate  for  carving  into 
a  tracery  of  leaves,  and  into  fruits  and  flowers ;  but  to  one  in  the 
right  mood,  which  is  neither  the  strictly  religious,  nor  the 
strictly  practical,  nor  the  strictly  rational,  but  rather  the  dreamy 
and  luxuriating,  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  to  surpass  the 
Taj  Mahal,  and  other  structures  of  this  sort.  As  to  that  kind 
of  beauty  which  may  be  called  the  pretty  or  the  merely  hand- 
some; it,  too,  may  be  realized  in  architecture,  if  the  building 
is  characterized  by  simplicity  and  reserve,  by  a  study  of  good 
form  in  the  outlines,  and  by  an  absence  of  all  attempt  to  put 
on  beauty  from  without;  especially  when  the  resulting  struc- 
ture is  associated  with  the  sober  business  of  trade  or  manu- 
facture, or  with  the  feelings  of  comfort  and  home-likeness. 

The  relations  of  architecture  to  sculpture  and  the  allied  arts 
are  both  historical  and  natural.  In  Greek  art,  where  both 
of  these  arts  reached  so  high  a  degree  of  development,  archi- 


394  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tecture  and  sculpture  were  employed  together  for  the  expres- 
sion of  a  common  ideal,  the  latter  serving — as  in  the  notable 
example  of  the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon — as  an  expressive  deco- 
ration for  the  former.  Such  a  union  of  these  two  arts,  in  serv- 
ice, is  still  a  desirable  means  of  enhancing  the  a^sthetical  effect; 
but  chiefly,  or  only,  in  the  case  of  large  public  buildings — ■ 
such  as  Halls  of  Justice,  Legislation,  Commerce,  Education, 
and  Museums  of  Industry  and  Art — where  more  definite  ideas 
control  the  beautifying  of  the  structure. 

From  the  point  of  view  which  we  have  chosen  to  assume. 
Sculpture  stands  higher  than  architecture ;  although  the  former 
is  properly  subservient  to  the  latter.  It  uses  the  same  mate- 
rials, such  as  wood,  metal,  stone;  but  the  limitations  of  size, 
and  the  greater  freedom  from  economic  and  social  require- 
ments, enable  the  sculptor  to  represent  more  purely  and  ef- 
fectively the  triumph  of  the  spirit  over  the  material  in  giving 
to  it  the  beauty  of  form.  Especially  is  this  true  when  the 
ideas  and  sentiments  of  the  spirit  find  their  supreme  visible 
expression  in  the  varying  attitudes  and  relations  of  the  human 
form.  In  order,  therefore,  to  reach  its  highest  development  as 
an  artistic  medium  for  the  expression  of  the  beauty  of  form, 
sculpture  must  have  an  independent  life  and  growth.  This 
independence  it  secured  in  a  considerable  measure  in  ancient 
Assyria  and  Egypt,  and  in  India,  where  it  was  and  still  is 
employed  to  express  religious  ideas;  but  above  all  others, 
among  the  Greeks.  The  beginnings  of  the  two  developments — 
the  one  in  union  with  structures  which  have  economic  and 
social  uses,  and  the  other  which  seeks  rather  for  the  free  ex- 
pression of  ideas  and  feelings  in  independence  of  such  uses — 
go  back  to  savage  and  primitive  man.  He  carves  decorative 
forms  upon  his  utensils;  and  he  also  satisfies  his  artistic  de- 
sires, generally  in  connection  with  religious  interests,  by  mak- 
ing detached  effigies  of  more  or  less  realistic  or  mythical  and 
imaginative  animal  and  human  beings. 

Of  all  the  arts,  sculpture  stands  at  the  head  as  moulding  its 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       395 

material  into  expressions  of  the  beauty  of  pure  form.  Now  it 
is  life  which  gives  form.  This  is  true  even  of  all  inanimate 
objects  which  have  beauty  of  form ;  they  appear  to  us  as  though 
shaped  in  beauty  by  an  indwelling  life.  Lifelikeness,  then, 
must  be  the  pre-eminent  characteristic  of  all  the  beauty  of  sculp- 
tured form.  The  shapes  of  all  things  that  have  life  are  modi- 
fied, either  slowly  or  swiftly,  so  as  to  express  the  nature  of 
the  forces  in  whose  possession  and  active  co-operation  the  life 
itself  consists.  In  the  case  of  our  own  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  mind,  we  know  that  the  most  precious  and  potent 
of  these  forces  are  our  own  thoughts,  sentiments,  and  pur- 
poses. The  life  which  belongs  to  others  of  our  own  species,  with 
its  thoughts,  sentiments,  and  purposes,  we  have  no  other  so  sure, 
visible  means  of  appreciating  as  that  which  consists  in  changes 
of  their  external  form.  We  infer  the  same  thing  to  be  true  of 
the  lower  animals.  By  the  very  essential  terms  of  our  knowl- 
edge, we  imagine  the  same  thing  to  be  also  true  of  all  self- 
like beings;  and  all  things  in  nature  are  more  or  less  self-like; 
and  looked  at  from  the  right  point  of  view,  they  almost,  if 
not  quite,  all  have  a  marvellous  beauty  of  form. 

All  the  resources  of  modern  physiology  and  psychology  might 
be  invoked  to  describe  and  emphasize  the  strength  and  subtlety 
of  those  relations  which  exist  between  the  various  kinds  and  in- 
tensities of  the  mental  states  and  the  changes  in  the  muscular 
system,  which  so  largely  control  the  human  form.  The 
most  complete  skill  in  the  plastic  arts  can  imitate  all  these 
changes  with  more  or  less  commendable  success.  But,  in  gen- 
eral, the  truer  province  of  the  art  of  sculpture  is  with  such  of 
those  ideas  and  sentiments  of  the  human  mind  as  are  most  im- 
portant and  most  universal.  The  trifling  and  ephemeral  concep- 
tions and  feelings  are  apt  to  prove  tiresome  when  given  the  im- 
portance and  permanency  of  an  expression  in  stone,  metal,  wood, 
or  other  material  available  for  this  art.  Thus  sculpture  sur- 
passes painting  in  the  expression  of  those  qualities  of  gravity, 
repose,  strength,  and  grace,  which  the  indwelling  life  imparts 


396  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

to  the  forms  life  assumes,  and  especially  to  the  human  form; 
while  expressive  hut  painful  attitudes,  sculptured  yawns  or 
smiles,  and  even  sculptured  flowers,  come  nearer  to  the  perilous 
limits  where  the  beautiful  is  separated  from  the  ugly  by  the 
character  of  the  contrasted  feelings  which  the  two  call  forth. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  all  these 
sentiments  and  thoughts  belong  to  human  life;  that  the  pitiful 
and  the  comic  are  not  to  be  excluded  from  the  field  of  the  arts; 
and  that  almost  any  human  experience  may  be  looked  upon  so 
as  to  excite  genuine  aesthetical,  as  well  as  genuine  ethical, 
sentiments  and  ideas. 

It  appears,  then,  that  those  qualities  of  the  object  which  are 
imparted  by  this  peculiar  form  of  art,  are  essentially  the  same 
as  the  qualities  which  have  already  been  recognized  as  char- 
acterizing the  spiritual  content  of  the  lower  forms  of  art. 
But  in  sculpture,  the  superior  mouldableness  of  the  material  in 
its  relation  to  the  artistic  object  admits  of  a  much  more  varied 
and  rich  content  than  in  landscape-gardening  and  architecture. 
More  ideas  and  sentiments,  of  the  sort  which  command  aesthet- 
ical  appreciation,  can  be  given  expression  under  the  conditions 
which  limit  this  art;  it  is,  therefore,  superior  from  the  point  of 
view  assumed  in  our  inquiry  after  the  spirit  of  beauty.  In 
a  word,  more  of  the  qualities  of  a  beautiful  spirit,  of  a  life 
corresponding  to  a  spiritual  ideal,  can  be  embodied  in  the 
statue,  or  group  of  statues,  or  other  sculptured  forms,  than  in 
a  landscape-garden  or  in  a  building  devoid  of  sculpture.  It 
would  help  the  inquiry,  did  space  permit,  to  discuss  again  the 
old  problem  offered  by  the  sculptured  Laocoon,  and  his  sons, 
struggling  in  vain  with  the  monstrous  serpents.  It  would  ap- 
pear that  its  claim  to  beauty  lies  partly  in  the  a^sthetical  as 
well  as  moral  interest  which  man  naturally  takes  in  all  contests 
that  put  the  will  to  a  test  for  courage  and  endurance ;  but  more 
especially,  when  the  story  is  known,  in  the  a"'sthetical  as  well 
as  moral  admiration  for  the  self-sacrifieing  heroism  of  the 
father  in  behalf  of  his  two  sons. 


THE    ARTS:    CLASSIFICATION    AND    NATURE     397 

What  has  already  been  said  about  sculpture  in  the  more 
strict  meaning  of  the  word  applies,  although  in  a  less  obvious 
and  important  way,  to  all  kinds  of  the  plastic  art,  whatever 
the  material  employed. 

Painting  and  the  pictorial  arts,  in  their  effort  to  give  a 
varied  and  rich  spiritual  content  to  the  objects  they  construct, 
have  certain  further  advantages  over  the  plastic  arts,  which  are 
due  to  the  increased  plasticity  of  the  material.  This  material 
is,  of  course,  some  kind  of  colored  pigment  or  wash  laid  upon  a 
background  of  paper,  canvas,  mortar,  or  even  wood,  metal,  and 
stone.  The  pictorial  arts  are  intimately  allied,  both  in  their 
nature  and  in  their  historical  development,  with  the  arts  of 
architecture  and  of  sculpture.  The  superior  power  of  expres- 
sion which  painting  has,  as  compared  with  sculpture,  is  due 
chiefly  to  two  important  particulars.  It  can  express  a  greater 
variety  of  human  ideas  and  feelings,  a  fuller  experience  of  the 
human  spirit  in  all  its  relations;  because  it  can  depict,  or  sug- 
gest, man's  relations  to  nature,  with  its  smaller  or  larger  ex- 
panses of  sky,  sea,  and  landscape.  And  it  can  also  depict,  or 
suggest,  many  men  in  the  complicated  situations  of  actual  his- 
tory, or  of  artistic  imagination.  Thus  the  thoughts  and  senti- 
ments with  which  nature  itself  seems  full,  and  which  reveal 
the  spiritual  content  of  things  as  they  appeal  to  man's  aesthet- 
ical  consciousness,  are  presented  in  a  powerful  and  large- 
minded  way.  Even  the  naturally  sublime  can  be  made  to  ap- 
peal to  the  eye  by  a  painting  as  it  cannot  by  either  architecture 
or  sculptured  form.  The  spirit  of  man  can  commune  with  the 
spirit  of  things,  through  the  medium  of  pictorial  art.  Thus, 
too,  those  common  interests,  common  thoughts  and  sentiments, 
and  common  movements,  which  involve  many  men,  can  be  put 
before  the  human  mind  in  the  artistic  way. 

The  second  of  the  two  important  causes  of  the  superiority  of 
painting  is  the  increased  lifelikeness  and  warmth  of  feeling 
which  the  use  of  color  imparts.  Sculpture  must  rely  chiefly 
on  form,  and  is  therefore  naturally  cold,  and  with  a  certain 


398  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

suggestion  of  a  lack  of  life;  or  even  a  suggestion  of  death. 
But  form,  both  in  things  and  in  man,  has  color;  and  color 
is  in  no  case  independent  of  a  suggestion  of  the  character  of 
the  indwelling  life.  In  natural  objects  it  is  not  superficial, 
not  laid  on  from  without;  the  rather  does  it  shine  through  from 
within,  and  its  changes  as  the  relations  between  indwelling  life 
and  the  life  of  the  sunlight  are  modified,  are  a  revelation  of 
the  character  of  that  play  in  which  the  spirit  is  constantly  tak- 
ing part.  Combining  these  two  advantages,  painting  can  set 
humanity  forth,  as  a  bit  of  nature  warm  with  its  own  peculiar 
life,  in  a  natural  or  social  environment  that  is  colored  by  the 
character  of  its  own  life, — a  contesting  and  contrasting,  or  a 
sympathetic  abode  for  man.  All  the  experiences  of  the  human 
spirit,  in  an  environment  whose  nature  is  adaptive,  appreciative, 
sympathetic,  can  thus  be  represented  by  the  difl'erent  resources 
of  the  pictorial  arts.  All  the  phases  of  external  nature,  which 
are  suggestive  of  an  indwelling  spirit  that  resembles  the  human 
spirit — only  grander,  more  subtle,  mysterious  and  alluring — 
can  be  represented  by  the  same  arts.  The  limitations  which 
the  character  of  the  materials  employed  impose  upon  the  ffis- 
thetical  sentiments  and  ideas  of  both  artist  and  beholder  are, 
nevertheless,  fixed  and  obvious.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the 
temptations  to  conventional  degeneracy,  to  mere  imitation,  to 
an  undue  exaltation  of  the  trivial  and  the  petty;  or  on  the 
other  hand,  to  a  slovenly  disregard  of  form  and  of  effects 
which  can  be  reached  only  by  a  patient  devotion  to  ideals.  But 
perhaps  above  all,  painting  suffers  from  the  temptation  to  be- 
come a  minister  to  the  love  of  luxury  and  to  lust. 

The  question  of  how  far  art  ought  to  be  merely  or  chiefly 
imitative, — or,  to  put  the  problem  in  more  acceptable  terms, 
"  true  to  nature," — and  how  far  chiefly  creative  and  suggestive 
of  something  higher  than  the  concrete  realizations  of  artistic 
ideals  which  purely  natural  objects  afford,  comes  to  the  front 
in  painting.  Here  the  nature  of  the  material  has  less  to  say 
about  what  the  physical  limitations  of  the  artistic  imagination 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE      399 

shall,  of  necessity,  be.  There  are,  therefore,  schools  of  paint- 
ing— realistic  or  idealistic,  minutely  accurate  or  romantic  and 
suggestive — to  a  much  larger  extent  than  is  possible  in  the  arts 
of  landscape-gardening,  architecture,  and  sculpture.  But  the 
maxims,  "true  to  life"  and  "faithful  to  reality,"  afford  no 
definitive  solution  to  such  a  problem  until  we  have  raised  and 
answered  the  questions :  To  what  kind  of  life  and  reality  must 
art  be  true?  Whether  attention  be  given  to  the  actual  quali- 
ties of  things  and  selves,  or  to  the  forms  of  expression  which 
these  qualities  assume,  no  superficial  survey  will  suffice  to  say: 
— What  that  is  alive  and  real  is  also  really  beautiful?  Only 
reflective  thinking  can  answer  this  question.  As  has  already 
been  shown,  reflection  must  indeed  be  placed  upon  a  basis  of 
actual  experience  in  which  the  historical  witness  of  the  arts,  as 
recorded  in  the  objects  approved  by  the  developing  aesthetical 
sentiment  and  judgments  of  mankind,  has  made  itself  known. 
And,  as  we  rise  higher  in  the  scale  of  the  arts,  we  seem  more 
clearly  to  gather  the  meaning  of  this  historical  witness.  It  is 
the  ideals  of  that  spiritual  life,  which  the  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind  knows  to  be  its  own,  and  when  in  its 
right  viind,  considers  to  be  of  supreme  value;  the  same  ideals 
which  the  mind  attributes  to  the  possession  and  expression 
of  N'ature,  in  the  objects  of  her  construction, — it  is  these  ideals 
in  which  the  essence  of  the  beautiful  is  to  be  sought  and  found. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  marked  advance  as  a  great  and  sudden 
change  that  is  encountered  when  the  art  of  Music  is  consid- 
ered with  reference  to  the  plasticity  of  the  material  which  it 
employs.  In  music  the  material  of  aesthetical  expression  is 
sound-waves  which  cause  conscious  tones  of  varying  intensity, 
tonal  quality,  and  pitch.  These  sound-waves  are  themselves 
first  moulded  by  the  vibrations  of  some  form  of  a  tube,  or 
string,  or  hollow  box  subject  to  percussion;  or  by  the  human 
organs  of  speech.  The  psycho-physical  relations  in  which  the 
stimuli  stand  to  the  sensations  received  mainly  by  the  ear  are 
such  as  to  render  sounds  by  far  the  most  plastic  and  easily 


400  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

varied  and  eirective  media  for  the  arts  in  expressing  and  ap- 
pealing to  the  a}sthetical  nature  of  man.  The  superiority  of 
music  over  the  arts  already  considered  consists  chiefly  in  these 
two  respects :  First,  the  nature  of  its  material  is  such  that  it 
can  present  the  art-object  in  an  actual  time-series.  Thus  a 
single  musical  composition  may  be  made  to  appeal  to  tlie  many 
changes  of  interests,  and  moods,  with  their  varying  values, 
which  occur  in  the  actual  spiritual  life.  This  life  in  man  is 
itself  a  succession  in  time.  As  a  succession  in  time,  it  is  al- 
ways changing;  and,  in  this  succession,  it  is  sometimes  joy- 
ful and  sometimes  sad;  sometimes  struggling  with  temptation 
or  penitent  over  temptations  yielded  to,  and  sometimes  trium- 
phant and  heroic;  sometimes  transported  by  love  and  some- 
times by  resentment;  sometimes  anguished  by  pain,  grief,  and 
disappointment;  but  often  also  uplifted  by  aspiration,  longing, 
and  tender  sympathy.  The  plastic  and  pictorial  arts  can  only 
obscurely  and  imperfectly  remind  the  soul  of  these  changes  of 
its  own  experience  in  time.  Nature,  since  she  is  subject  to 
similar  changes  which  are  suggestive  of  the  different  moods 
and  varying  states  of  the  human  spirit,  also  lives  her  life,  in 
time.  Therefore,  in  this  one  respect  at  least,  music  represents 
man's  environment  for  rosthetical  appreciation,  far  better  than 
do  the  plastic  and  pictorial  arts.  For  the  ear  of  man  is,  in  a 
special  manner,  the  organ  of  time;  and  through  its  use  of 
this  organ,  art  can  either  lead  or  keep  pace  with  consciousness 
which  is  always  a  succession  of  states  in  time. 

But  tlie  second  and  allied  reason  for  the  superiority  of  music 
is  even  more  important.  Above  all  other  arts,  music  expresses 
and  arouses  the  emotions,  as  such.  The  mastery  of  the  emo- 
tions by  this  form  of  art  is  chiefly  due  to  these  three  charac- 
teristics: —  (1)  Music  appeals  to  and  expresses  all  the  kinds 
and  shades  of  human  feeling  with  emphasis  and  power.  Are 
the  emotions  grave  and  solemn  and  compelling  to  the  soul 
which  cannot  escape  quickly  from  their  grasp;  and  so  cannot 
resume  its  light-hearted  and  quick-stepping  way  of  receiving 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE      401 

the  incidents  of  life?  Musicians  use  a  style,  a  tempo,  and  a 
weight  and  pitch  of  harmonious  or  somewhat  dissonant  chords, 
which  shall  speak  a  language  truer  to  this  feeling  than  any  suc- 
cession of  articulate  words.  But  if  the  heart  feels  like  dancing, 
and  the  will  can  scarcely  control  the  muscles  from  executing 
what  the  heart  feels;  then,  too,  there  is  a  style,  and  tempo, 
and  weight  and  pitch  of  musical  sounds,  adapted  to  this  mood 
of  the  mind's  life.  With  our  modern  instruments,  especially 
by  the  full  orchestra,  or  the  grand  organ,  or  the  military  band, 
and  in  only  less  degree  by  the  pianoforte,  the  feeling  for  the 
sublime  can  be  stimulated  and  lifted  to  a  height  scarcely  below 
the  power  of  all  but  the  most  sublime  scenes  in  nature,  and 
quite  above  what  any  of  the  plastic  or  pictorial  arts  can  easily 
reach.  Indeed,  there  is  little  doubt  that  a  thorough  psycho- 
physical analysis  of  the  bodily  conditions  for  the  feeling  of  the 
sublime,  would  show  that  they  are  most  easily  brought  about 
by  immensities  of  sound. 

(2)  The  superior  control  of  music  over  the  emotions  depends 
also  upon  the  fact  that  its  appeal  is  made  to  such  of  them  as 
are  most  fundamental  and  universal,  and  in  a  simple,  direct 
way.  It  is  not  the  feeling  peculiar  to  "  poor  me,"  but  the 
feeling,  of  whatever  sort,  which  I  share  in  common  with  the 
race,  to  which  the  art  of  music  makes  its  most  legitimate  and 
therefore  successful  appeal.  In  a  word,  it  is  human  feeling; 
it  is  the  emotion  which  is  universal  and  common  to  mankind. 
The  private  experience  in  so  far  as  it  is  associated  with  particu- 
lar ideas  and  unusual  emotions  is  not  so  much  the  proper  field 
of  musical  expression.  The  composer,  indeed,  may  be  moved  to 
expression,  and  guided  in  his  expression,  by  what  is  born  of, 
and  intimately  associated  with,  his  own  private  and  even  very 
peculiar  experiences.  But  if  his  composition  is  to  be  a  beauti- 
ful object,  it  must  stir  and  guide  similar  feeling  in  the  listener, 
irrespective  of  personal  differences  in  associations,  that  are  due 
to  equally  private  and  peculiar  experiences.  It  is  ministry  to 
joy,  to  sorrow,  to  love,  to  resentment,  to  aspiration  and  long- 


402  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ing,  to  struggle  for  achievement  and  to  peace  secured  or  for- 
feited but  to  be  regained — all  that  is  common  and  universal  in 
human  emotion — within  which  lies  the  true  beauty  of  the 
musician's  art.  And  like  every  other  true  artist,  the  great 
musical  composer  imparts  the  qualities  of  his  own  spirit  to  the 
plastic  material  furnished  by  the  invisible  and  intangible  air- 
waves,— not  selfishly  as  though  their  greatest  worth  were  to 
win  pity  or  applause  for  himself,  but  the  rather  to  express, 
to  satisfy,  and  to  cultivate  the  profoundest  and  most  universal 
emotions  of  humanity.  From  tliis  point  of  view  it  appears 
how  just  and  natural  is  the  alliance  between  music  and  religion; 
and,  as  well,  between  music  and  all  the  more  important  civic 
and  social  ideals  of  the  race.  We  are  also  reminded  of  the  fact 
that  mere  admiration  for  technical  skill, — •for  the  high  C  or 
even  the  high  F  of  the  soprano,  or  for  the  graceful  bowing  or 
rapid  trilling  of  the  virtuoso, — however  natural  or  proper  it 
mny  be,  is  a  totally  different  thing  from  a  true  appreciation  for 
the  beauty  of  the  art-object  in  music. 

(3)  The  other  two  characteristics  of  music  lead  to  a  third 
which  in  some  sort  summarizes  them  both.  This  is  the  free- 
dom of  m.usic  as  an  art.  This  superior  freedom  is  indeed 
largely  due  to  the  superior  plasticity  of  its  material.  But  the 
character  of  the  material  is  not  the  whole  cause.  The  freedom 
of  musical  art  is  also  due  to  what  the  art  is  chiefly  trying  to 
express.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  chiefly  those  emotions  of  the 
self-conscious  spirit,  which  occur  in  a  succession  of  time,  and 
which  constitute  the  important  values  of  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
That  it  should  rejoice,  hope,  aspire,  achieve  and  feel  trium- 
phant; but  equally  also  that  it  should  suffer,  struggle,  know 
disappointment  and  loss,  and  win  peace  by  effort; — these  are 
the  supremely  valuable  experiences  of  the  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind.  To  have  these  experiences  is  to  lead  the 
spiritually  beautiful  life.  It  is  the  kind  of  life  to  which  that 
Nature,  whose  personification  as  an  expression  of  immanent 
spirit,  we  are  more  and  more  convinced,  is  a  legitimate  work 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE       403 

of  the  thought  and  imagination  of  man,  has  consigned  every 
individual  as  a  member  of  the  race;  has,  indeed,  consigned  the 
entire  race.  This  Nature  is  all  "groaning  and  travailing  to- 
gether "  in  its  search  for  redemption.  Above  all  the  plastic 
and  pictorial  arts,  music  is  free  to  express  and  to  appeal  to 
aesthetical  sentiments  and  ideas,  because  these  sentiments  are 
so  fundamental  and  universal,  while  the  attached  ideas  are  so 
vague  and  vast  and  unrestricted  in  meaning. 

The  various  qualities  of  the  art-objects,  as  we  have  seen 
them  to  appear  in  the  construction  of  the  other  arts, — such 
as  strength  and  suggestions  of  courage  and  heroic  effort,  order 
and  proportion,  freedom  and  grace — are  all  qualities  which 
contribute  to  the  determination  as  a  thing  of  beauty  of  the 
musical  composition.  But  the  very  nature  of  the  life  which 
the  musical  composition  is  adapted  to  express  with  a  power, 
simplicity,  and  freedom,  excelling  any  other  art,  puts  it  under 
certain  limitations.  Music  can  be  made,  to  a  considerable  de- 
gree, imitative  of  natural  sounds,  or  descriptive  of  physical 
and  social  situations  and  relations.  It  had  its  origin  largely 
in  the  imitation  of  nature;  for  nature  herself  appeals  in  varied 
and  marvellously  effective  ways  through  the  ear  to  man's 
sesthetical  consciousness.  There  is  the  roaring,  moaning,  sigh- 
ing, and  murmuring  of  wind  and  sea,  the  sweet  and  peaceful 
soughing  of  the  grains  and  grasses,  the  thunderous  sound  fol- 
lowing the  lightning  flash  or  the  falling  of  the  avalanche;  as 
well  as  the  songs  of  birds,  the  chirping  of  the  cicadas  and  other 
insects,  and  many  other  utterances  of  a  natural  kind.  And 
there  are  musical  qualities  in  all  these  sounds;  none  of  them 
are  mere  noises.  The  best  music  is,  however,  although  minis- 
tering, not  didactic ;  and  when  music  attempts  to  use  the  meth- 
ods of  poetry  and  of  the  dramatic  art,  whether  by  itself  or  in 
combination  with  these  modes  of  aesthetical  expression  (opera, 
oratorio,  song),  it  inevitably  loses  something  of  its  own  peculiar 
power.  It  may  gain,  however,  a  partial  equivalent  in  other 
ways. 


404  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

The  bond  which  has  always  connected  poetry  and  dancing 
with  music  is  twofold.  They  are  all  rhythmic  in  their  nature; 
they  all  keep  time,  and  they  all  express,  though  in  different 
ways,  to  a  considerable  extent,  the  same  emotions. 

Poetry,  althougli  in  some  particulars  inferior  to  each  of  the 
other  arts,  surpasses  them  all  in  its  power  to  express  and  arouse 
sesthetical  sentiments  in  combination  with  definite  sesthetical 
ideas.  It  is,  therefore,  man's  supreme  form  for  giving  voice 
to  his  particular  feelings  and  more  definite  judgments  respect- 
ing the  beautiful  in  nature  and  in  human  life.  Nor  is  it  diffi- 
cult to  see  why  this  is  so.  And  the  reasons,  when  discovered, 
carry  us  a  long  way  into  the  very  heart  of  the  life  of  beauty. 

Poetry  shares  with  music  the  advantage  of  using  sound  as  its 
highly  plastic  or  mouldable  material.  But  it  surpasses  music 
in  its  power  of  definite  expression;  because,  although  it  is 
inferior  in  the  ability  to  stir  a  quick  and  passionate  response 
by  way  of  emotion,  its  material  of  sound-waves  is  moulded  into 
the  form  of  human  language  or  articulate  speech.  Language 
is  the  supremely  human  form  for  the  expression  both  of  feel- 
ings and  of  ideas.  The  experiences  of  the  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind  of  man  are  both  known  and  communi- 
cated in  language  as  by  no  other  medium.  If  one  could  not 
talk  to  one's  self,  could  not  put  into  expression  in  words  the 
experiences  of  one's  own  which  no  other  knows,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  these  experiences  could  ever  take,  even  for  one's  self, 
the  values  of  truth,  beauty,  or  morality.  The  spirit  of  the  race 
has  made  human  language;  but  the  language  made  by  the  race 
for  the  individual  is  no  dispensable  factor  in  the  creation  of 
the  individual's  asthetical  ideas  and  sentiments;  as  well  as  in 
determining  the  character  and  limitations  of  his  knowledge 
and  of  his  morals.  That  the  communication  of  the  higher 
and  more  definite  forms  of  sentiment  and  ideation  require 
language,  needs  no  argument. 

The  supremacy  of  language  as  the  human  mode  of  expres- 
sion appears  more  clearly  from  such  considerations  as  follow: 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE      405 

(1)  A  careful  comparison  of  human  language  with  all  the 
various  and  subtle  ways  of  communication  employed  by  the 
lower  animals,  shows  that  in  every  important  particular  man's 
articulate  speech  embodies  all  the  peculiar  excellences  of  his 
entire  nature,  as  a  being  of  thought,  feeling,  and  will.  Espe- 
cially in  this  connection  should  it  be  noticed,  how  all  the  various 
intensities  and  shades  of  human  feeling  shape  the  emphasis, 
the  arrangement,  the  rhythm,  as  well  as  the  conceptual  content, 
of  the  uttered  word.  Emotion  of  any  sort,  instinctively  and 
inevitably  affects  articulate  speech.  So  true  is  this,  that  prose 
can  scarcely  become  impassioned  and  remain  mere  prose.  So 
true  is  this  that  familiarity  makes  men  more  sensitive  to  the 
delicate  shadings  of  accent  and  emphasis  which  feeling  imparts 
— and  no  less  when  the  speaker  is  striving  to  suppress  or  con- 
ceal the  feeling — than  to  the  meaning  of  the  words  as  inter- 
preted by  common  usage  or  by  lexicographic  authority. 

(2)  Language  is  also  capable  of  almost  limitless  development 
as  the  experience  of  the  race  requires  it  for  its  growing  science, 
art  and  philosophy.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  very  character 
of  the  material  will  allow  real  growth  of  the  art  of  architec- 
ture and  sculpture,  beyond  what  ancient  and  mediaeval  times 
left  to  the  world  centuries  ago;  and  whether  painting  can  be 
made  any  more  beautiful,  or  developed  in  quite  new  directions, 
to  excel  the  work  of  the  greatest  of  the  old  masters.  Music, 
too,  can  make  combinations  of  sounds,  by  grace  of  modern 
instrumentation,  that  were  unheard  in  former  days;  but  will 
it  give  birth  to  musicians  surpassing  the  art  of  Beethoven, 
Schubert,  or  ]\rozart?  We  may  not,  indeed,  have  poets  of 
greater  artistic  genius  or  talent,  in  the  centuries  to  come  than 
those  which  have  sung  in  past  centuries.  In  general,  the  arts 
are  not  capable  of  the  same  unlimited  development  which  be- 
longs to  tlie  particular  sciences.  But  if  the  form  of  beauty 
which  poetry  takes  does  not  make  increase,  it  will  not  be  be- 
cause its  medium  of  expression  has  reached  the  limits  of  its 
possible  development. 


40G  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

By  its  very  nature,  then,  poetry  is  fitted  to  express  and  to 
arouse  every  form  and  shade  of  sesthetical  sentiments  and  ideas 
as  no  other  art  can.  It  can  speak,  not  simply  of  love  as  a 
fundamental  and  universal  emotion,  but  of  all  the  particular 
forms  and  phases  of  love;  it  can  depict  all  the  imaginable 
features  of  attractiveness  and  lovableness  belonging  to  the  be- 
loved object.  It  can  deal  in  the  same  way  with  the  human 
emotions  of  grief,  anger,  longing,  aspiration,  resignation,  and 
every  other  experience  of  the  spirit's  life  in  its  present  physical 
and  social  environment.  And  it  can  set  this  life  into  a  sympa- 
thetic environment,  both  physical  and  social,  with  more  of 
definiteness  and  warmth  of  coloring  than  is  possible  for  the 
kindred  art  of  painting.  And  while  painting  can  only  suggest 
those  spiritual  qualities  of  Nature  which  the  appreciative  eye 
discerns  in  her  various  scenes  and  moods,  poetry  can  utter 
their  voice  with  an  unmistakable  distinctness. 

Since  it  also,  like  music,  moves  in  time,  poetry  can  give  ses- 
thetical  expression  and  value  to  all  the  changing  incidents  of 
human  life,  in  the  actual  order  of  their  occurrence.  Thus  it 
can  move  with  an  even  step  along  with  the  human  spirit  in  its 
walk  through  the  pathway  of  life.  Hence  its  supreme  lifelikeness 
— a  congeries,  or  rather,  artistic  grouping  of  qualities  brought 
about  by  the  creative  imagination,  which  we  have  found  to 
afford  one  of  the  most  important  tests  of  the  beauty  of  every 
art-object.  Indeed,  it  would  not  be  an  unpardonable  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  the  truly  best  poetry  is  the  expressed  life  of 
the  spirit  of  beauty  in  the  spirit  of  man.  To  all  these  excel- 
lences, which  are  chiefly  due  to  the  character  of  its  medium, 
poetry  owes  its  supremacy  as  a  uniquely  human  form  of  art. 
It  is  the  medium  of  man,  of  living  man,  for  the  active  and 
definite  expression  of  his  spiritual  experiences,  as  no  other 
medium  can  express  them,  on  their  aesthetical  and  aesthetically 
appreciative  side. 

The  Eesthetical  effect  of  poetry  is  further  greatly  increased 
by  the  variety  and  strength  of  the  associated  ideas  and  feelings 


THE  ARTS:  CLASSIFICATION  AND  NATURE      407 

which  its  use  of  language  enables  it  tlefinitely  and  (lelibcrately 
to  elicit.  The  artist  in  other  iields  of  art  cannot  surely  reckon 
upon  the  character  of  those  associations  which  his  object,  when 
produced,  is  likely  to  call  forth  in  the  individual.  In  the  art 
of  music  particularly,  he  does  not  wisely  aim  to  control  too 
strictly  the  associated  ideas;  he  is  satisfied  if  he  can  produce 
those  kinds  of  fundamental  and  universal  emotion  which  cor- 
respond to  his  theme  and  to  its  treatment.  But  the  poet  must 
always  have  a  more  definite  aim.  Even  if  it  is  the  feeling  of 
mystery,  in  the  most  vague  and  general  way,  which  the  com- 
poser wishes  to  express  and  to  stimulate;  he  cannot  talk  non- 
sense; he  cannot  use  words  that  have  no  definite  meaning,  or 
suggestions  of  definite  associations,  to  any  human  soul.  The 
failure  to  have  any  clear  meaning,  with  its  customary  disregard 
of  all  form,  is  the  chief  degradation  and  destruction  of  much 
of  our  modern  music  and  poetry.  But,  then,  it  too  is  charac- 
teristic of  much  of  our  modern  life. 

Similar  conclusions  of  a  practical  sort  are  reached  when  we 
consider  that  he  who  wishes  the  ministrations  of  this  form 
of  art  can  find  them  to  fit  every  one  of  his  peculiar  experiences, 
and  all  of  the  associated  feelings  and  ideas  with  which  these 
experiences  are  now  accompanied  or  are  remembered  as  having 
been  accompanied  in  past  time.  One  cannot  actually  see  again 
the  Himalayas,  the  Jotunheim  Mountains,  or  the  Alps,  by 
reading  imaginative  descriptions  of  mountains;  but  one  can 
read  some  poem  which  expresses  the  beauty  of  that  sublimity 
which  belongs  to  them  all.  One  cannot  actually  see  again  the 
Taj  Mahal  by  moonlight,  when  looking  upon  the  page  of  a 
printed  book ;  but  one  may  stimulate  similar  states  of  imagina- 
tion and  feeling  with  pictures  and  associations,  moulded  into 
the  right  artistic  form  by  some  master  of  the  poetical  art. 

An  analysis  of  those  formal  qualities  which  are  thought 
to  give  beauty  to  the  object  in  poetical  art  shows  them  to  be 
essentially  the  same  as  those  common  to  all  the  other  arts. 
Strengtli,  proportion,  freedom  and  grace,  luxuriousness  or  sim- 


408  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

plicitv  of  tlie  noble  sort,  characterize  the  form  of  the  truly 
great  products  of  the  poets  in  every  age  and  clime.  But  no 
more  in  poetry,  than  in  the  other  arts,  or  than  in  human  life 
when  considered  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  can  all  these 
characteristics  be  realized  in  any  one  form  of  language  at  one 
and  the  same  time.  Thus  different  poems,  like  different  build- 
ings, pieces  of  sculpture,  paintings,  or  musical  compositions, 
are  beautiful  in  different  ways.  For  as  we  are  about  to  dis- 
cover, there  are  different  and  measurably  incompatible  kinds 
of  beauty,  to  which  different  typical  forms  of  our  festhetical 
consciousness  respond ;  although  the  spirit  of  beauty  is  one  and 
the  same.  But  like  the  human  spirit,  and — as  we  believe — like 
the  Spirit  of  Nature — this  unity  is  not  sameness,  or  monot- 
ony, or  identity  without  change.  It  is,  the  rather,  just  this 
wealth  of  variety  which  is  realized  in  every  spiritual  life  and 
development — although  it  is  all  under  the  control  of  an 
Ideal.  What  has  been  said  about  all  the  other  arts  shows  us 
that,  when  considered  from  the  purely  eesthetical  point  of  view, 
the  supreme  kind  of  art  is  found  in  the  form  of  the  Drama. 
For  tliis,  at  its  best,  gives  us  the  whole  Self,  as  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  mind,  in  the  complex  environment  of 
nature  and  human  society,  thinking,  feeling,  and  in  action;  but 
as  represented  to  itself,  for  self-appreciation,  in  the  most  ef- 
fective ffisthetical  form.  And  as  Aristotle  long  ago  said,  it  is 
Tragedy,  which  is  the  supreme  and  morally  purifying  form  of 
the  drama.  But  this  very  power  of  the  dramatic  representa- 
tion of  human  life  to  express  and  set  forth  this  life  in  its 
totality,  makes  the  drama,  when  jesthetically  bad,  the  most 
disturbing  and  disgusting  of  all  the  failures  of  an  attempt  at 
art;  and  makes  it,  when  morally  unworthy,  the  worst  possible 
corrupter  of  flie  public  taste  and  the  public  morals.  Infinitely 
worse,  both  from  the  ethical  and  the  psychological  points  of 
view,  than  had  architecture,  l)ad  sculpture,  bad  painting,  or 
bad  music,  is  the  aesthetically  ugly  and  morally  unscrupulous 
stasre. 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY 

The  enormous  differences  which  exist  among  the  different 
objects  esteemed  beautiful,  whether  in  nature  or  in  art,  and 
which  are  partly  due  to  differences  in  material  and  partly  to 
economic  and  utilitarian  considerations,  compel  us,  in  our 
search  for  the  spirit  of  beauty,  to  return  to  a  more  careful 
analysis  of  assthetical  experience.  The  different  forms  of  ad- 
miration which  men  give  to  these  objects  correspond  to  the 
different  kinds  of  beauty  which  the  objects  present.  The  fact 
of  universal  experience  is  that  the  human  spirit  is  moved  in 
notably  different  ways  while  contemplating  these  objects.  From 
this  follows  the  postulate  or  metaphysical  assumption  whicli  is 
the  ultimate  aim  of  our  inquiry.  It  may  be  stated  in  a  prelim- 
inary way  as  follows :  The  varied  movements  of  the  human 
spirit  correspond  in  some  rational  sort  to  the  spiritual  quali- 
ties actually  belonging  to  the  real  objects.  That  there  are 
kinds  of  beauty  in  reality  is  the  explanation  for  the  corre- 
sponding kinds  of  man's  aesthetical  consciousness.  But  since 
the  latter  are  matters  of  fact  that  admit  of  investigation  by 
more  or  less  sure  scientific  methods,  while  the  former  are  in- 
ferences or  faiths  of  reflective  thinking  about  which  the  mind 
may  easily  have  its  doubts,  the  philosophy  of  beauty  begins 
with  the  matters  of  fact. 

The  notably  different  states  of  consciousness  that  fall  under 
the  common  category  of  the  a-sthetical,  seem  to  depend  chiefly 
upon  the  following  three  factors:  (1)  The  feelings  awakened, 
especially  with  respect  to  their  sensuous  qualities,  and  their 
varying  intensities,  and  magnitudes  or  massiveness  (seizure  of, 
and  spreading  over,  all  the  bodily  organs)  ;   (2)  The  imagina- 

409 


410  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tion  and  intellect  in  their  joint  work  of  picturing  and  thinking, 
which  the  intuition  of  the  object  both  stimulates  and  requires; 
and  (3)  the  character  and  number  of  the  associations  that  are 
awakened,  and  that  in  general  group  themselves  very  differ- 
ently according  to  the  nature  of  the  object  which  imagination 
and  thought  present  to  the  mind.  From  all  these  points  of 
view — to  illustrate — we  may  contrast  our  a^sthetical  attitude, 
when  divested  of  all  personal  fears  or  other  non-a?sthetical 
motifs,  in  the  presence  of  a  storm  at  sea  and  when  looking 
upon  a  lovely  orchid ;  or  when  viewing  an  eruption  of  Vesuvius 
and  when  examining  one  of  the  tiny  vases  buried  by  its  ashes 
so  long  ago. 

Without  claiming  perfection,  or  even  freedom  from  all  ob- 
jectionable features,  for  this  classification,  we  will  recognize 
as  sufficient  for  our  purpose,  five  markedly  different  kinds  of 
the  beautiful  to  which  the  oesthetical  nature  of  man  responds 
in  five  markedly  different  ways.  The  psychological  differences 
in  the  attitudes  of  the  Self  toward  these  kinds  of  beauty  have 
already  been  explained  as  chiefly  due  to  differences  in  the  blend- 
ing of  the  three  factors  of  sensuous  feeling,  active  imagination 
or  creative  thought,  and  sympathetic  association  of  ideas. 
These  five  kinds  are  (1)  the  Sublime;  (2)  the  Graceful;  (3) 
the  Orderly,  or  Harmonious;  (4)  the  Unrestrained,  and  so 
Luxurious  or  Wild;  and   (5)  the  Pretty,  or  Handsome. 

The  feelings  excited  by  what  men  consider  sublimely  beauti- 
ful have,  of  necessity,  a  certain  sensuous  intensity,  but  more 
especially  a  massiveness  and  wide-spreading  sensuous  char- 
acter. In  extreme,  but  typical  cases,  the  heart  seems  enlarged; 
the  breathing  deepens;  the  head  wants  to  u])lift  itself;  the 
whole  body  seems  to  expand.  In  general,  there  is  an  emotional 
condition  which  announces  an  increase  of  the  release  of  stored 
energy,  a  sense  of  being  extraordinarily  alive.  But  in  such 
cases,  there  is  also  a  sequent,  if  not  accompanying  feeling  of 
being  overstrained,  overpowered;  as  of  being  too  weak  and 
small    adequately    to    appreciate    the    sublimity    of    the    object. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  411 

Imagination  and  intellect  are  correspondingly  stimulated  to  a 
condition  of  excited  activity  in  the  effort  worthily  to  fill  out 
the  picture,  or  the  conception,  which  is  the  real  object  toward 
which  the  mind  is,  by  the  external  stimuli,  pointed  the  way. 
For  in  the  sublimely  beautiful,  more  than  in  any  other  kind 
of  beauty,  there  is  always  something  far  more  than  what  is 
merely  presented  to  the  senses.  Meantime,  also,  a  rush  of 
associated  impressions  or  clearer  ideas  adds  further  intensity 
and  expressiveness  to  the  entire  mental  and  emotional  condi- 
tion. Enlargement  and  uplift  are  thus  communicated  to  tiie 
spirit. 

In  his  treatment  of  the  sublimely  heautiful,  the  philosopher 
Kant  recognized  two  species  of  the  emotion  which  corresponded 
to  two  classes  of  characteristics  in  the  object.  Tliese  were  the 
mathematically  sublime  and  the  dynamically  sublime.  The 
immensities  of  time  and  space,  when  the  imagination  is  incited 
to  the  effort  to  picture  them  by  some  concrete  representation 
of  them — for  example,  the  sky  as  viewed  in  Egypt  or  made 
known  by  astronomy,  the  aeons  of  actual  history,  or  tliose  more 
extended  a-ons  borrowed  from  infinite  time  by  tlie  modern 
theory  of  evolution — excite  the  sentiments  and  ideas  of  thi'? 
kind  of  beauty.  But  above  all,  this  effect  is  produced  by  the 
attempt  to  conceive  of  God  under  such  terms  as  the  Infinite 
or  the  Absolute.  This  species  of  the  "mathematical  sublime" 
is  contemplated  and  appreciated  with  less  of  pliysical  agitation 
and  strain  than  is  the  dynamically  sublime.  Great  exhibitions 
of  any  form  of  energy  excite  human  admiration,  wliether — as 
for  the  most  part — made  by  natural  forces  or  by  collective 
bodies  of  men.  The  resistless  movement  of  the  railroad  train, 
the  ponderous  and  powerful  machinery  of  tlie  modern  steam- 
ship, as  well  as  the  thunder  storm,  the  volcanic  explosion,  the 
earthquake,  when  separated  from  the  images  of  the  destruction 
they  wreak,  excite  us  in  similar  manner.  Pretty,  they  cer- 
tainly are  not ;  but  the  sublime  stands  above  the  pretty  in  spir- 
itual impressiveness  and  charm. 


412  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

These  Kantian  divisions,  however,  do  not  properly  cover  the 
entire  field  of  the  sublime.  Kant  himself  recognized  the  truth 
tliat  respect  for  the  moral  law  was  a  form  of  emotion  which 
had  a  place  under  both  of  the  two  categories,  the  ethical  and 
the  ffisthetical.  His  attitude  toward  his  own  conception  of  this 
law  was  one  which  demanded  for  its  expression  the  warmth  of 
coloring  imparted  by  the  sentiment  of  the  sublimely  beautiful. 
And,  indeed,  the  morally  sublime  is  the  supremely  worthy  ex- 
ample under  the  general  species.  It  is  this  which  accounts 
for,  and  justifies,  the  fact  that  there  is  a  certain  unmistakable 
kinship  between  the  feelings  with  which  men  view  Niagara 
or  the  sky  over  the  Arabian  Desert,  and  those  with  which  they 
tliink  of  Martin  Luther  at  the  Diet  of  Worms,  or  of  David 
Livingstone  dead  upon  his  knees  in  Africa.  In  the  heroism  of 
man's  spirit,  when  it  triumphs  over  temptation  and  weakness, 
nature  gives  us  the  supreme  concrete  expression  of  the  morally 
sublime.  "  God,"  said  Hegel,  "  is  a  spirit  and  it  is  only  in 
man  tliat  tlie  medium  through  which  the  divine  element  passes 
has  a  conscious  spirit  that  actively  realizes  itself."  As  to  the 
sublime  in  the  products  of  art  he  further  declares  that  "  God 
is  operative  neither  more  nor  less  than  in  the  phenomena  of 
nature;  but  the  divine  element,  as  it  makes  itself  known  in  the 
work  of  art,  has  attained,  as  being  generated  out  of  mind,  an 
adequate  thoroughfare  for  its  existence." 

Doubtless  it  would  not  be  consistent  with  the  same  principle 
of  division  to  make  a  special  class  of  the  sublimity  of  the  mys- 
terious. But  it  may  be  noted  as  an  important  and  suggestive 
truth,  that  the  sublime  is  always  mysterious  or  unexplained,  in 
large  part.  That  which  man  seems  to  himself  wholly  to  compre- 
hend, no  longer  appears  worthy  of  admiration  on  account  of 
its  sublimity.  For  the  man  of  science  who  is  petty  and  devoted 
chiefly  to  the  observation  and  description  of  details  of  fact, 
without  a  superior  interest  in  the  hidden  causes  and  undiscov- 
ered laws,  nothing  either  in  nature  or  in  art  is  likely  to  ap- 
pear sublime.    But  to  him  who  constantly  bears  in  mind  the 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  413 

magnitude  and  the  mystery  of  Nature,  tlie  sentiments  and 
ideas  ajipropriate  to  the  sublimely  beautiful  are  never  far 
away. 

In  the  beauty  which  is  chiefly  characterized  by  Grace,  the 
conception  of  motion  is  always  either  obviously  prominent,  or 
really  dominant,  although  in  a  concealed  way.  This  kind  of 
beauty,  therefore,  either  suggests  or  actually  illustrates  that 
easy  and  joyful  movement  along  lines  of  least  resistance,  which 
is  significant  of  abounding  life.  Thus  we  feel  ourselves  en- 
titled to  speak  of  the  graceful  lines,  or  shapes,  of  objects  which, 
like  buildings  and  statues,  cannot  move.  They  suggest,  how- 
ever, such  easy  and  joyful  movement  as  is  brought  to  pass  by 
the  indwelling  forces  of  life.  Graceful  melodies  and  poetical 
compositions  characterized  by  this  kind  of  beauty  do  actually 
move;  they  change  in  the  succession  of  time,  and  in  rhythmic 
fashion,  the  positions  of  their  elements  in  pitch  or,  also  in 
the  articulate  word  with  its  burden  of  feeling  and  idea.  The 
contrasted  kind  of  beauty  is  suggestive  of  vigor  and  strength, 
which  overcomes  with  endurance  and  perhaps  with  pain,  the 
obstacles  to  movement  of  any  kind  which  are  embedded  in 
the  environment  of  human  life  and  in  the  structure  of  every 
material  organism.  For  if  we  must  "get  there"  somehow,  and 
cannot  do  it  by  easy  and  joyful  movements;  then  we  must 
turn  angles  and  take,  not  the  curved  line  of  beauty  but  the 
even  more  beautiful  line  (if  the  truth  of  life  be  clearly  under- 
stood) of  consecrated  toil.  Besides,  in  works  of  art  which 
depict  the  rugged  and  scarred  aspects  of  nature,  or  the  rude 
physical  surroundings  as  moulded  by  the  common  man  for 
himself,  or  the  human  form  bent  and  ploughed  and  feruled 
by  contention  with  physical  forces,  there  is  an  expression  of, 
and  an  appeal  to,  another  side  of  the  spiritual  life  wliich  has 
a  beauty  of  its  own.  The  statues  of  Praxiteles  and  the  peas- 
ants of  Millet  are  both  beautiful — each  in  their  own  way.  The 
highest  example  of  this  kind  of  beauty  is  the  human  form, 
either  in  such  pose  as  indicates  a  fullness  of  physical   well- 


414  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

being,  or  in  such  action  as  suggests  cultivated  and  kindly- 
feeling  as  its  motive.  The  risk  in  the  art  which  strives  to  depict 
the  perfection  of  this  kind  of  beauty  is  that  of  making  ynere 
gracefulness,  as  a  matter  of  pride  in  its  possessor  and  of  sensu- 
ous longing,  the  minister  to  luxury,  effeminacy,  and  even  lust. 
In  this  respect  nature  sets  to  art  an  example,  by  refraining 
from  so  debasing  its  ideal.  Just  to  be  beautiful  in  this  way  is 
not,  of  itself,  a  worthy  sesthetical  ideal  for  a  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind. 

Certain  objects,  or  groupings  of  objects,  or  series  of  occur- 
rences, which  cannot  fitly  be  called  either  sublime  or  graceful, 
excite  sesthetical  feeling  because  of  the  symmetrical  character 
of  the  composition,  or  sequence,  of  their  parts.  This  kind  of 
beauty  is  that  which  we  have  classified  as  the  beauty  of  the 
Orderly  or  Harmonious.  All  compositions,  whether  products 
of  nature  or  of  art,  wlien  regarded  as  compositions,  must  pos- 
sess more  or  less  of  this  kind  of  beauty.  Under  this  ideal 
influence  the  mind  regards  the  various  beautiful  landscapes  as 
scenes,  whether  their  parts  are  selected  and  synthesized  by  the 
eye's  looking  out  upon  nature,  or  by  the  artist  who  is  always 
alert  in  his  search  for  materials  for  a  true  picture.  In  carv- 
ing a  statue,  in  constructing  a  building,  in  composing  a  piece 
of  music  or  a  poem,  there  must  be  regard  had  to  order,  pro- 
portion, balance,  harmony,  and  other  similar  qualities.  Those 
musical  compositions,  for  example,  which  make  upon  the  lover 
of  music  the  impression  that  the  tremendous  and  complex 
sounds  called  forth  might  just  as  well  be  arranged  in  any  other 
tlian  their  actual  order,  can  scarcely  expect  to  endure  in  the 
sesthetical  admiration  of  future  generations  when  placed  beside 
the   classical  masters  of  this  divine  art. 

This  species  of  aesthetical  feeling  is  excited  by  the  percep- 
tion or  mental  representation  of  proportion,  balance  of  parts, 
and  similar  forms  of  the  expression  given  to  one  ideal,  in  con- 
trol over  numerous  elements.  The  imagination  seizes  witli  a 
pleasure  which  is  more  than  merely  sensuous,  and  which  has 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY    •  416 

the  qualities  belonging  to  all  genuine  sestlictical  appreciation, 
upon  the  unity  which  a  plan  brings  to  numerous  factors  of 
varying  sizes  and  kinds.  Coupled  with  this,  however,  there  is 
undoubtedly  a  sensuous  element.  For  the  effect  of  combina- 
tions of  the  dissimilar,  and  repetitions  of  the  similar,  is  to 
make  more  easy  and  successful  the  grasp  of  imagination  and 
thought.  When  arranged  under  the  rules  which  are  followed 
for  the  construction  of  beautiful  objects  of  this  species,  details 
do  not  need  to  be  slowly  and  painfully  mastered,  as  details,  in 
order  to  appreciate  their  beauty  in  combination.  They  have 
this  beauty,  indeed,  not  altogether  or  chiefly  in  themselves;  but 
as  growing  out  of  the  relations  in  which  they  are  made  to 
stand  to  one  another  as  parts  of  an  orderly,  planful,  and  har- 
monious whole.  The  secret  of  our  appreciation  for  this  kind  of 
beauty  is  thus  revealed.  Like  all  the  sesthetical  feeling  which 
critics  bestow  upon  the  form  of  the  object,  it  is  not  mere  and 
dead  form — as  though  any  such  thing  could  be;  it  is  the  life 
that  shapes  and  shines  through  the  form  which  is  greeted  and 
recognized  as  worthy  of  admiration  and  respect.  The  object 
reveals  the  triumph  of  reason  and  rational  wall  over  unorgan- 
ized material;  and  the  self-conscious  and  self -deter  mining 
mind  of  man  recogiuzes  this  triumph  with  a  kind  of  sympa- 
thetic joy.  Therefore,  this  kind  of  the  beautiful,  too,  is  an 
appeal  made  by  the  spiritual  characteristics  of  the  object  to 
the  kindred  spirit  of  the  subject  of  aesthetical  sentiment  and 
judgment. 

It  is  easy  to  understand,  then,  what  are  the  risks  of  failure 
and  revulsion  which  lie  in  the  path  of  this  particular  kind  of 
art-work.  They  are  chiefly  the  risks  of  a  wearisome  monotony, 
or  a  relatively  spiritless  compliance  with  conventional  rules 
for  the  too  precise  ordering  of  artistic  achievement.  In  nature, 
indeed,  life  follows  law;  and  all  varieties  of  beautiful  forms 
yield  secret  or  manifest  obedience  to  gravity,  sunshine,  and 
various  kinds  of  physical  and  chemical  energies.  In  its  most 
hidden  working  this  life  which  shapes  things,  while  not  dis- 


416  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

obedient  to  "  the  lieavenly  vision,"  does  not  attempt  to  loose 
itself  from  the  bonds  of  earth.  But  in  nature,  to  the  eye  which 
penetrates  her  secrets  and  is  clarified  by  pure  feeling,  rather 
than  suffused  with  morbid  sentimentality,  there  is  no  monoto- 
nous conformity  to  form  for  form's  sake.  There  is,  the  rather, 
infinite  variety  given  to  the  formal  expression  of  every  species 
of  life.  In  using  the  word  life  here,  we  do  not  wish  to  confine 
it  to  its  proper  biological  use.  For  the  statement  is  as  true 
of  crystals  as  it  is  of  animals,  of  gems  as  it  is  of  flowers.  But 
no  natural  objects  are  more  strictly  and  definitely  ordered  than 
is  the  shaping  of  crystals  and  of  gems;  but  each  kind  has  its 
own  beauty,  and  even  the  individuals  of  each  may  reveal  some 
particular  kind  of  charm.  While,  as  to  the  larger  combinations 
of  natural  objects,  the  scenes  arranged  by  Nature  when  unin- 
terfered  with  by  man,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  ugly  or 
disagreeable  monotony. 

The  human  mind,  however,  finds  relief  from  those  aspects 
and  experiences  which  breed  the  oppressive  sense  of  excessive 
sameness  or  conventionality,  in  breaking  loose  as  it  falsely 
imagines — from  law  and  in  realizing  its  own  inherent  rights 
in  the  joy  of  the  wild.  So  it  is  with  human  ffisthetical  experi- 
ence; and  with  the  objects  which  minister  to  this  experience. 
For  there  is  a  beauty  of  the  Luxuriant  and  the  Wild.  And  the 
feeling  for  this  kind  of  the  beautiful  is  that  which  naturally 
and  fitly  belongs  to  a  varied  and  superabounding  life.  In  order 
to  arouse  this  feeling,  the  object,  whether  in  nature  or  in  art, 
must  suggest  enough  and  to  spare  of  indwelling  spiritual 
energy.  In  its  larger  and  more  impressive  natural  exhibitions, 
this  species — the  luxuriant  and  wildly  beautiful — has  certain 
features  akin  to  those  of  the  sublime.  But  there  is  a  lack  of 
that  confidence  in  the  supremacy  of  reason,  and  that  respect 
for  the  law-abiding,  which  belongs  to  the  beauty  of  sublimity. 
The  rugged  and  desolate  mountain  side,  the  earthquake  shock, 
the  volcanic  eruption,  may  seem  to  the  mind  of  the  observer 
to  have  title  to  either  one  of  these  kinds  of  beauty,  according 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  417 

to  his  point  of  view.  But  a  mixture  of  terror  and  even  of  re- 
pulsion is  likely  in  the  one  case,  to  take  the  place  of  feelings 
of  awe  and  even  of  worshipful  reverence  in  the  other.  The 
Titans,  godlike  in  strength,  and  rejoicing  in  its  exercise,  but 
without  a  godlike  pity  or  reserve,  are  made  responsible  by  un- 
taught imagination,  for  the  grandly  wild:  Divine  Reason,  in 
control  of  boundless  might,  is  suggested  by  reflective  thinking, 
as  the  author  of  the  awfully  sublime. 

The  aesthetical  feeling  aroused  by  this  kind  of  beauty  is  at 
its  purest  and  best  in  the  presence  of  such  natural  objects  as 
tropical  forests  or  gardens;  and  in  such  objects  of  art  as  those 
buildings,  carvings,  paintings,  poems,  where  form  and  color 
seem  to  have  escaped  from  all  the  restraints  of  convention,  and 
to  have  "  run  wild  "  without,  however,  overstepping  too  far 
the  limits  of  their  vital  forces  and  due  relations  in  the  effort  to 
throw  off  all  external  constraint.  In  furniture,  dress,  and 
daily  occupations  and  companionships,  the  mind  which  is  sensi- 
tive to  aesthetical  interests  and  considerations,  apart  from  all 
craving  for  the  unlawful  indulgence  of  appetite  and  lust,  takes 
a  real  and  legitimate  satisfaction  in  occasional  breaks  with  the 
slavery  of  routine,  the  monotony  of  convention.  In  the  devel- 
opment of  art,  too,  the  epoch-making  masters  and  schools  have 
generally  been  characterized  by  a  revolt  against  the  existing 
regulations  and  dicta  of  the  critics.  What  is  called  order,  and 
is  therefore  ordered  for  compliance  with  by  every  beauty-loving 
spirit,  has  come  to  seem  oppressive  and  even  irrational  and 
ugly — at  least  in  part.  Then,  the  indwelling  life  breaks  beyond 
the  bounds  of  the  ordinary;  it  roves  and  revels  in  its  newly 
found  freedom. 

It  is  at  once  evident  that  the  last  two  kinds  of  beauty,  and 
the  corresponding  aesthetical  attitudes  toward  their  objects, 
are  complementary,  if  not  contradictory.  In  true  art,  as  in 
nature  considered  from  the  aesthetical  point  of  view,  they  are 
complementary  rather  than  essentially  contradictory.  Work 
should    be    foUowed    by    play;   the    expenditure    of    the    vital 


418  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

energies  should  not  be  always  ordered  along  the  same  monoto- 
nous lines.  This  is  the  truth  of  physiology.  And  the  result- 
ing aesthetical  truth  is,  that  the  full  and  complete  life  of  the 
spirit  requires  both  of  these  two  kinds  of  expression.  In  gen- 
eral, life  should  be  carefully  ordered  and  therefore  engaged 
in  the  repetition  of  the  same  energies.  It  should  be  directed  by 
intelligent  will  toward  the  arrangement  and  repetition  of  the 
component  factors  of  its  work.  But  at  times,  it  should  have  the 
more  unrestrained  joy  of  throwing  off — what  may  become  a 
burden  and  a  source  of  ugliness  and  inefficiency — the  conscious 
compliance  with  conventional  rules  for  being  merely  alive  and 
for  doing  nothing  but  work.  That  there  is  aesthetical  as  well  as 
ethical  risk  connected  with  the  appreciation  of  this  kind  of 
beauty,  scarcely  needs  argument.  As  the  excess  of  order  tends 
to  the  restriction  of  development  and  the  slavery  of  convention 
in  art  and  in  life;  so  does  the  excessive  love  of  the  beauty  of 
the  luxuriant  and  the  wild  tend  toward  offensive  savagism  and 
immoral  indecency.  The  Bohemian  has  its  place  in  the  spirit 
of  beauty;  but  its  habitual  devotee  is  sure  to  lose  most  of  the 
genuinely  ffisthetical  elements  of  life  and  art  in  the  froth  and 
mire  of  selfishness  and  sensuousness. 

There  are  many  things,  both  in  nature  and  in  art,  which 
do  not  seem  to  fall  easily  under  any  of  the  four  kinds  of  the 
beautiful  whose  dominating  characteristics  have  already  been 
described.  Yet,  if  we  deny  all  beauty  to  them,  we  greatly 
diminish  the  scope  and  the  content  of  human  aesthetical  experi- 
ence. We  have  called  this  kind  of  beauty,  that  of  the  Pretty, 
or  the  Handsome.  That  these  terms  designate  an  inferior  class 
of  objects  and  a  correspondingly  lowered  response  to  them  in 
the  form  of  genuinely  aesthetical  sentiments  and  judgments, 
there  seems  to  be  no  doubt.  But  one  should  not  be  disposed 
habitually  to  use  these  words  with  a  half-concealed  contempt. 
For  pretty  things  and  handsome  animals  and  human  beings 
play  an  important  part  in  ministering  to  the  joy  and  cultivation 
of  human  life,  on  its  aesthetical  side.    Nature  is  full  of  them,  is, 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  419 

indeed,  largely  made  up  of  them.  Most  of  the  objects  produced 
in  all  kinds  of  art,  if  they  can  make  any  claim  to  beauty  at 
all,  M'ould  have  to  be  assigned  to  this  fifth  and  lowest  class. 
They  are  not  sublime,  or  especially  graceful;  neither  are  they 
patterned  after  ideals  of  harmony  or  of  the  luxuriant  and  the 
wild.  But  they  may  give  a  certain  unselfish  pleasure.  The 
uninstructed  lover  of  nature  is  interested  in  this  way,  in  al- 
most all  natural  objects;  the  common  people  appreciate,  though 
not  with  really  good  taste  or  cultivated  judgment,  such  objects 
when  produced  by  the  various  kinds  of  artisanship.  Many  of 
them  have  more,  or  less  of  beauty,  or  of  the  semblance  of 
beauty  in  them.  But  of  what  kind  is  their  beauty  ?  Let  us  call 
it:  "just  the  being  pretty  or  handsome." 

The  beauty  of  prettiness  stands,  as  respects  the  sentiments 
and  the  activities  which  it  calls  forth,  at  the  other  extreme 
from  the  beauty  of  the  sublime.  In  this  kind  of  beauty,  the 
object  must  be  brought  near  the  eye,  if  it  have  visible  shape; 
and  a  certain  minuteness  of  attention  must  be  given  to  the 
delicacy  and  skill  involved  in  its  structure.  The  massive  feel- 
ings of  awe,  and  that  sort  of  qiuisi-moTal  respect,  which  char- 
acterize the  sublime  are  wanting  in  all  such  cases;  And  if  the 
mere  prettiness  of  the  object  is  too  conspicuous,  or  is  secured 
at  the  expense  of  the  other  qualifications  necessary  to  every 
beautiful  object,  it  may  even  excite  some  slight  feeling  of  that 
contempt  to  which  weakness  invariably  tempts  the  vigorous 
mind.  Since  the  object  does  not  appear  as  a  species  of  con- 
duct, the  modifying  feelings  of  compassion,  or  pity,  or  even 
sympathy,  are  not  likely  to  be  aroused.  The  popular  airs, 
and  songs,  and  even  the  popular  poems,  where  they  are  not 
positively  vulgar  or  immoral,  belong  for  the  most  part  to  this 
class.  Amongst  so-called  civilized  peoples,  they  have  not  the 
seriousness,  simplicity,  and  instinctive  beauty  which  belongs 
to  almost  all  the  art-objects  of  savage  peoples.  What  lover  of 
genuine  beauty  does  not  feel  compelled  to  confess  that  the  pot- 
tery of  these  peoples,  the  decorations   of  their   utensils  and 


420  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

clothing,  their  songs,  etc.,  are  aesthetically  far  superior  to  much 
which  finds  favor  in  the  modern  department  store  or  upon  the 
modern  vaudeville  stage? 

That  the  relatively  unimportant  natural  structures  have  a 
beauty  of  their  own,  needs  no  proof  for  one  who  has  habitually 
studied  them  with  a  trained  eye  and  an  appreciative  mind.  No 
surfaces  decorated  in  patterns  of  many  colors  and  geometrical 
shapes  by  human  skill  surpass  the  wings  of  the  most  insignifi- 
cant beetle;  no  lace-work  from  any  convent  or  factory  equals 
in  delicacy  the  web  of  the  common  spider  or  the  thread  spun 
by  the  silk-worm.  The  blades  of  grasses  and  of  grains,  and  the 
sand  or  soil  men  tread  under  foot,  are  constructed  with  a  won- 
derful regard  for  variety  in  unity,  for  proportion  and  order, 
but  with  freedom  to  evolve  an  infinite  number  of  differences  in 
details.  In  that  sympathy  with  nature  which  is  so  highly 
characteristic  of  Japanese  art,  worm-eaten  surfaces,  crooked 
and  gnarled  branches,  grotesquely  shaped  stones  and  minerals, 
are  esteemed  to  possess  in  more  abundant  measure  the  character- 
istics which  the  human  spirit  should  appreciate  as  beautiful 
and  worshipful  when  wrought  into  her  products  by  the  Spirit 
of  Nature.  All  this  sesthetical  sentiment  is  confirmatory  of  the 
view  for  which  we  have  been  contending.  Any  object  in  order 
to  he  considered  beautiful,  mu^t  appear  to  the  human  mind 
as  revealing  some  traits  kindred  with  itself,  of  an  ideally 
worthy  spiritual  life.  The  same  thing  is  true,  although — con- 
fessedly— in  inferior  degrees,  of  all  those  objects  of  art  which 
can  establish  an  acceptable  claim  to  the  beauty  of  prettiness, 
of  the  petite,  because  they  exhibit  the  result  of  painstaking 
human  skill.  The  beauty  by  which  they  are  characterized  is 
indeed  of  a  "  delicate,  diminutive,  or  inferior  kind  " ;  but  it  pos- 
sesses, although  in  diminished  degree,  some  of  essentially  the 
same  characteristics  as  those  which  belong  to  the  other  and 
higher  types  of  beauty.  These  objects  have  in  them  a  pinch 
of  the  same  salt,  a  modicum  of  the  same  universal  life. 

There  is  no  other  department  of  philosophy  in  which  the 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  421 

conclusions  of  reflective  thinking  have  so  little  of  the  compel- 
ling quality  which  investigation  by  scientific  methods  imparts 
as  in  the  Department  of  so-called  ^^sthetics.  The  philosophy  of 
the  beautiful  ends  in  a  sort  of  rational  faith  rather  than  in  a 
system  of  reasoned,  conclusions.  This  fact  is  due,  in  an  un- 
avoidable way,  to  the  very  nature  of  the  objects  studied;  and 
to  the  affective  or  emotional  results  which  such  objects  produce 
within  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind  of  man. 
These  emotional  and  intellectual  effects,  as  they  appear  in  con- 
sciousness, however,  are  facts  of  no  transitory  and  restricted, 
importance.  They  are  continuous,  abiding,  and  universal, 
throughout  the  history  of  the  human  race.  It  is  possible  to 
trace — not,  indeed,  to  their  first  sources  but  to  relatively  simple 
forms — the  development  of  the  particular  arts  and  of  the  sub- 
divisions of  these  arts.  But  all  the  various  attempts  which 
have  been  made  to  account  by  a  theory  of  evolution  for  the 
essential  psychical  elements  and  persistent  types  of  man's 
gesthetical"  consciousness  are  wholly  artificial  and  unsatisfactory. 
The  nature  of  the  savage,  or  of  the  mythical  primitive  man 
(so  far  as  anything  is  known  about  primitive  man),  in  respect 
of  these  elements  and  aspects,  has  always  been  the  same  as  our 
own  in  this  day  of  so  largely  misplaced  aesthetical  pride  and 
self-conceit.  For  in  truth,  human  nature  is  as  essentially 
ffisthetical  as  it  is  essentially  moral  and  religious.  Man  has, 
therefore,  always  recognized  beauty  as  something  worthy  of 
appreciation  and  of  artistic  striving.  Still  further,  while 
there  always  has  been,  is  now,  and  probably — it  is  to  be  hoped, 
certainly — will  be,  wide  differences  of  opinion  and  practice,  in 
assthetics  as  in  ethics  and  in  religion;  essentially  the  same 
vital  and  spiritual  characteristics  which  he  has  thought  to 
recognize  in  certain  objects  have  always  moved  him  to  admir- 
ing appreciation  and  to  artistic  endeavor.  The  important  philo- 
sophical, or  metaphysical,  truth  is  this:  The  race  has  the  faith 
that  Beauty  is  objective.  Or,  to  say  the  same  thing,  in  other 
language:  The  ajsthetical  ideals  which  the  human  mind  appre- 


423  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ciates  and  even  worships  are  confidently  believed  to  be  fol- 
lowed in  the  very  structure  of  real  Things.  In  a  large  way. 
Nature,  or  the  Being  of  the  World,  expresses  and  appreciates 
man's  Ideal  of  Beauty. 

It  is,  of  course,  true  that  by  no  means  every  thing  in  the 
world  of  nature  is  considered  by  every  observer  to  possess  the 
characteristics  of  beauty.  Material  things,  in  general,  do  not 
appear  to  man  to  be  under  the  same  obligation  to  be  beautiful 
as  that  under  which  conscious  selves  appear,  to  be  moral. 
Some  things,  indeed,  seem  to  most  people  to  be  positively  ugly, 
or  even  repulsively  so;  while  most  natural  objects  are  to  the 
multitude  of  those  who  use  them,  at  best  indifferent  as  respects 
any  claim  to  the  special  characteristics  of  beauty.  Are  not 
toads,  and  snakes,  and  dead  branches,  and  dry  leaves  after  the 
autumn-colors  have  faded,  either  distasteful  or  quite  lacking  in 
positive  charm?  That  depends  upon  the  individual's  point 
of  view  and  limited  associations.  Philosophy,  most  assuredly, 
cannot  solve  the  problem  of  the  ugly  in  Nature,  if  it  sets  out 
with  the  assumption  that  Nature,  in  order  to  be  altogether 
beautiful,  ought  to  fashion  evQry  object  from  her  hand  so  as 
to  afford  to  everybody  a  measure  of  sensuous  enjoyment;  or 
that  she  ought  so  to  restrict  her  forces  as  never  to  do  damage 
to  the  economic  or  sanitary  interests  of  any  individual  or  com- 
munity of  individuals.  But  such,  in  fact,  is  not  the  World's 
way  of  being  either  beautiful  or  beneficent.  And  there  is  abun- 
dant reason  to  think  that,  if  it  were  her  way,  Nature  could  not 
produce,  or  elicit  and  develope,  in  man  the  appreciation  and  ex- 
pression of  the  really  noblest  and  most  worthy  of  aesthetical 
ideals.  Granted,  that  the  human  mind  cannot  perfectly  solve 
in  any  way  the  seeming  presence  of  so  much  in  the  production 
of  nature  that  offends  its  aesthetical  sentiments.  Neither  science 
nor  philosophy  can  solve  any  of  the  problems  offered  by  the 
Universe  at  large,  in  a  perfectly  satisfactory  way.  The  more, 
however,  is  known  of  natural  laws,  the  more  natural  objects 
and  natural  processes  are  studied  with  judgment  and  insight; 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  423 

the  more  of  a  real  and  grand,  as  well  as  of  a  delicate  and  ex- 
quisite beauty  is  revealed  in  the  Being  of  the  World.  And 
finally,  the  mind,  seems  warranted  in  believing  that  there  is 
nothing  made  or  done  by  Nature  which,  however  indid'erent 
or  ugly  it  may  appear  from  some  points  of  view,  may  not 
claim  to  be  considered  positively  beautiful,  with  some  one  of 
the  various  kinds  of  beauty,  from  other  points  of  view.  That 
natural  forces,  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  objects  or 
processes,  should  be  both  sublime  and  pretty,  both  ol)viously 
orderly  and  almost  oppressively  luxuriant  and  wild,  would  be 
as  really  impossible  for  the  human  spirit  to  appreciate,  as  it 
is  apparently  impossible  for  Nature  to  perform. 

As  we  observe  the  World .  on  the  largest  scale,  and  reflect 
more  profoundly  upon  our  observations,  from  the  aesthetical 
point  of  view,  we  learn  the  lesson  which  science  habitually 
teaches: — that  we  are  dealing  with  a  vast,  and  in  many  re- 
spects incomprehensible  system.  In  this  system  what  appears 
to  men  as  bad  and  ugly,  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  sensitive 
natures  or  of  their  economical  interests,  is  generally  an  essential 
part  of  the  sublimity,  grandeur,  harmony,  and  super-abound- 
ing life,  which  belong  to  the  Totality  of  the  Being  of  the  World. 
The  Spirit  of  Beauty,  in  the  larger  meanings  and  uses  of  the 
beautiful,  is  possessed  by  that  Eeality,  whose  essential  character- 
istics are  revealed,  not  to  science  alone,  but  also  to  the  moral, 
artistic,  and  religious  nature  of  humanity.  This  ssthetical 
postulate,  or  article  of  faitli,  is  based  upon  what  seem  to  be 
facts  of  experience.  Every  beautiful  object,  whatever  be  the 
kind  of  beauty  wJiicli  it  especially  emphasizes  and  represents, 
is  beautiful  because  it  suggests  in  a  concrete  way  some  one  or 
more  of  the  characteristics  of  an  ideal  spiritual  Life. 

This  postulate,  or  article  of  faith,  mny  be  proved — so  far 
as  the  word  proof  is  applicable  to  the  subject — by  all  that 
has  thus  far  been  said  as  to  the  nature  of  a;sthetical  conscious- 
ness, of  the  characteristics  of  beautiful  ol)jects,  and  of  the 
kinds  of  l)eauty,  as  presented  in  nature  and  in  the  arts.     Some 


424  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  these  reasons  may  properly  now  be  restated  and  summarized 
under  the  following  four  heads:  (1)  All  the  forms  of  art, 
so  far  as  the  plasticity  of  the  material  they  employ  and  the 
economic  conditions  and  utilitarian  uses  of  their  product  will 
permit,  do  represent  and  express  some  form  of  an  ideal  spiritual 
Life.  According  to  the  particular  form  of  the  spiritual  ideal 
which  they  succeed  in  following  is  the  kind  of  aesthetical  sen- 
timent and  approving  judgment  which  they  call  forth.  Art 
concretely  embodies  the  Spirit  of  Beauty  so  as  to  appeal  to  the 
spirit  in  man  which  appreciates  the  beautiful.  (2)  This 
theory  explains  why  Tragedy  is  the  highest  form  of  art.  The 
tragic  idea,  and  the  appeal  to  its  appropriate  sentiments, 
whether  set  forth  in  sculpture,  painting,  music,  poetry,  or 
prose  dramatic  literature,  is  found  in  almost  all  the  greater 
and  more  highly  appreciated  products  of  art.  The  verdict  of 
the  world's  best  artistic  judgment  runs  this  way.  Struggle 
against  difficulties,  scorning  of  pain,  self-sacrificing  afTeetion, 
the  often  baffled  but  final  triumph  of  justice,  human  peni- 
tence and  pity,  and  Divine  pity  and  grace,  find  their  expres- 
sion through  the  tragic  in  art.  But  these  are  all  ideas  and 
sentiments  which  fall  under  the  most  heroic  spiritual  activi- 
ties and  which  correspond  to  the  supreme  and  profoundly  sat- 
isfying ideals  of  spiritual  Life.  (3)  The  persistent  and  ra- 
tional determination  of  mankind  not  to  regard  its  ffisthetical 
sentiments  and  judgments  as  purely  subjective,  but  to  ground 
them  in  Eeality,  cannot  be  disregarded.  This  determination 
is  both  cause  and  result  of  the  belief  that  all  the  forms  and 
kinds  of  beauty  have  their  ground  and  ultimate  explanation 
in  a  Universal  Spiritual  Life.  (4)  The  World,  when  regarded 
from  the  gesthetical,  as  from  every  other  point  of  view,  is  seen 
to  be  undergoing  a  process  of  development.  It  is,  at  least  in 
many  respects,  and  so  far  as  its  processes  are  open  to  human 
research,  coming  to  be  more  and  more  beautiful ;  and  therefore 
more  and  more  sati^^factory  to  man's  sesthetical  ideals.  This 
evolution  itself  is  of  all  conceivable  natural  things  or  proc- 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  425 

esses,  the  most  awfully  and  mysteriously  sublime.  It  is  a  de- 
velopment characterized  by  order  and  harmony  and  grace, 
and  by  exquisite  workmanship  in  details;  but  it  is  also  char- 
acterized by  rigor,  severity,  and  luxuriant  wildness  in  parts. 
It  has  the  marks  of  a  spiritual  process,  of  a  vast  march  onward 
that  is  compelled,  and  shaped  or  more  gently  urged,  by  the 
Power  of  an  indwelling  Spiritual  Life. 

The  treatment  given  by  philosophy  to  the  ideals  of  humanity 
is  not  satisfied  without  making  the  attempt  somehow  in 
Reality  to  unify  them  all.  We  do  not  anticipate  unduly  this 
attempt  when  we  call  attention  at  this  point  to  the  intimate 
relation  between  man's  aesthetical  and  his  moral  ideals  and 
development.  It  has  already  been  said  that  the  two  cannot 
be  identified.  To  accomplish  this  identification  would  impov- 
erish human  nature  and  would  weaken  and  degrade  man's 
conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World.  But  the  intimacy  of 
the  relation  may  be  made  clear  by  the  following,  among  other 
considerations.  There  is,  both  in  theory  and  in  practice,  an 
intimate  and  fairly  constant  relation  between  man's  aesthet- 
ical and  his  moral  development.  This  truth  is  evinced  by  the 
following  among  other  classes  of  facts.  Reference  has  already 
(p.  366f.)  been  made  to  the  fact,  that  there  are  sentiments  and 
judgments,  approving  or  condemning,  which  men  universally 
express  toward  certain  forms  of  conduct,  but  which  may  be, 
with  about  equal  propriety,  considered  from  the  sesthetical 
point  of  view.  The  existence  and  the  behavior  of  things  may 
be  beautiful,  or  indifferent  as  regards  beauty,  or  positively 
ugly.  But  unless  things  are  more  completely  personified  and 
endowed  with  moral  feelings  and  with  some  apprehension  of 
moral  ideals  than  science  permits,  neither  their  nature  nor 
their  behavior  can  be  judged  as  coming  under  ethical  cate- 
gories. For  Things  are  self-like ;  but  they  are  not  such  Selves  as 
are  self-conscious  and  self-determining  minds.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  nature  and  the  behavior  of  men  fall,  of  necessity, 
under  both  classes  of  categories.     Men  may  be  both  moral  or 


426  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

immoral,  and  also  beautiful  or  ugly.  Heroic  deeds  of  human 
courage,  fidelity,  endurance  of  pain  and  of  loss  in  the  pursuit 
of  noble  ideals,  are  the  subject-matter  of  the  most  effective 
forms  of  the  poetic  and  dramatic  arts.  Examples  of  this  are 
the  master-pieces  of  literature,  such  as  the  Antigone  of  Soph- 
ocles, the  Book  of  Job,  the  Inferno  of  Dante,  the  King  Lear 
of  Shakespeare,  the  Paradise  Lost  of  ]\Iilton,  the  Faust  of 
Goethe.  In  all  these,  and  in  all  similar  cases,  however,  the 
characters  of  the  drama  and  the  treatment  given  to  them  hy 
the  artist  are  spontaneously  and  inevitably  passed  upon  from 
the  point  of  view  which  regards  their  fidelity  to  moral  ideals. 
The  deeds  depicted  in  this  form  of  art  may  excite  a  salutary 
revolt  and  disgust,  or  feelings  of  penitence,  pity,  and  sympa- 
thy, which  are  neither  exclusively  ethical  nor  exclusively  aes- 
thetical;  but  which  are  both,  and  about  equally. 

This  mingling  of  ethical  and  a^sthetical  experience  hears 
witness  to  the  truth  that  immorality,  if  it  is  brought  before 
the  mind  in  such  form  that  its  true  moral  character  is  dis- 
cerned, is  also  distasteful  to  the  sesthetical  consciousness,  when 
the  latter  is  placed  in  its  own"  purer  and  higher  points  of 
view.  But  the  general  fact  is  particularly  obvious  as  respects 
certain  vices,  like  cowardice,  meanness,  cruelty,  unfaithfulness, 
and  other  similar  departures  from  the  ideal  of  a  noble  man- 
hood. If  it  is  objected  that  much  in  the  plastic  and  pictorial 
arts,  and  especially  in  literature  (above  all,  in  drama,  poetry, 
and  the  novel),  which  is  undoubtedly  beautiful,  is  also,  as 
undoubtedly,  either  positively  immoral  or  of  immoral  tend- 
ency, the  objection  must  be  admitted  to  be  true  in  fact. 
But  it  misses  the  true  point  of  the  argument.  It  is  true  of 
religion,  too,  that  much  irrational  belief,  degrading  supersti- 
tion, and  cruel  and  immoral  practice,  have  grown  out  of  the ' 
most  profound,  permanent  and  universal  religious  impulses 
and  ideas.  In  l)oth  classes  of  intimate  relations  between  the 
acsthetical  and  the  other  controlling  ideals,  the  seeming  dis- 
crepancies   and   contradictions   depend    chiefly   upon   mistaken 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  427 

points  of  view.  The  courage  of  the  murderer,  quoad  courage, 
is  virtuous;  the  beauty  which  nature  or  art  gives  to  forms  and 
relations  that  excite  and  minister  to  deeds  of  violence  or  lust, 
is  beautiful  indeed.  But  change  the  motive  as  discerned  in 
the  one  case,  and  the  attitude  of  either  artist  or  observer  toward 
the  object;  then  the  whole  transaction  changes  its  real  ajsthet- 
ical  character  and  value.  In  order  to  remain  beautiful,  the 
nude  in  the  plastic  and  pictorial  arts,  or  the  lifelikeness  and 
charm  of  the  drama,  the  poem,  or  the  novel,  must  not  appear 
to  lend  itself  to  the  ministry  of  lust.  The  moment  the  bounds 
of  either  form  of  obligation  are  overstepped  (and  these  bounds 
are  different  in  different  communities,  at  different  times,  and 
under  changing  social  conditions;  and  are  often  matters  for 
honest  differences  of  opinion),  the  product  becomes  both  ugly 
and  immoral  when  viewed  in  the  clearer  light  of  the  aesthet- 
ically and  ethically  perfect  Ideal. 

That  men  who  are  great  in  art  are  by  no  means  always  con- 
spicuous for  virtue  is  a  fact  which  offers  no  objection  to  our 
theory.  The  psychological  unity  of  the  individual  Self,  and 
the  spiritual  unity  of  the  race,  are  indeed  such  that  neither 
the  individual  nor  society  can  develope  aesthetically  or  morally 
with  an  exclusive  regard  to  either  one  of  these  supreme  inter- 
ests. But  if  the  question  be  raised  as  to  how  either  one  may  be 
temporarily  subjected  to  a  deliberate  disregard  of  the  other, 
the  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  weakness  and  limitations  of 
human  nature.  How  can  a  human  soul  unite  such  diverse 
qualities  as  an  exquisite  and  sure  appreciation  of  what  is  beau- 
tiful, in  many  of  the  qualities  and  kinds  of  real  beauty,  with 
dullness  of  intellect  or  hardness  of  heart  toward  important 
moral  interests?  It  is  just  this  kind  of  unifying  of  discordant 
and  contrary  sentiments,  judgments  and  practices,  which  every 
self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind  does  actually  effect. 
And  while,  on  the  one  hand,  the  so-called  "  artistic  tempera- 
ment "  must  often  be  charged  with  much  of  this  vain  struggle 
to  make  a  harmonious  totality  out  of  a  character  and  a  life 


428  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

that  is  swerved  from  tlie  ideal  of  spiritual  perfection  by  ex- 
cessive devotion  to  some  one  of  its  component  ideals;  it  must 
also  be  remembered  that  not  a  few  of  the  greatest  artists  and 
lovers  of  beauty  have,  like  Plato  and  the  supreme  Leader  of 
men  toward  the  religious  ideal,  recognized  both  beauty  and 
righteousness  as  not  interchangeable  but  related  forms  of  that 
which  is  ideally  Good. 

The  intimate  relation  which  exists  between  the  ideals  of 
beauty  and  the  ideals  of  religion  will  appear  more  clearly  in 
subsequent  chapters.  It  will  then  be  discovered  that  some  of 
the  most  productive  sources  of  religious  experience  arise  in  the 
ffisthetical  sentiments  and  ideas.  This  is  most  conspicuously 
true  of  the  feeling  of  the  sublime.  Indeed,  when  combined 
with  the  allied  or  identical  feelings  for  the  mysterious  and 
incomprehensible,  it  is  found  that  man's  attitude  toward  the 
sublimely  beautiful  is  perhaps  the  chief  source  of  his  nobler 
religious  experiences  and  of  his  higher  religious  developments. 
But  the  sentiments  and  beliefs  of  religion  are,  in  only  less 
degree,  called  out  by  the  artistic  harmony,  freedom  of  super- 
abounding  life,  and  technical  skill,  with  which  the  Spirit  that 
is  in  Nature  produces  its  objects  and  brings  them  before  the 
appreciative  spirit  of  man.  These  qualities  of  Divinity  religion 
recognizes,  in  its  earlier  developments,  in  the  form  of  nature- 
worship;  just  as  the  more  definitively  ethical  qualities  of  Divin- 
ity are  recognized  in  the  form  of  ancestor-worship. 

The  part  which  the  influence  of  aesthetical  ideals  plays  in 
the  development  of  the  individual  and  of  society  cannot  safely 
be  neglected ;  it  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  As  said  Pro- 
fessor Everett  (Poetry,  Comedy,  and  Duty,  p.  43f.)  :  "There 
are  few  who  would  not  recognize  the  fact  that  the  dying  out 
of  the  sense  of  beauty  from  any  life  is  a  real  loss.  There  are 
few  who  do  not  realize  that  the  enjoyment  of  beauty  is  one 
of  the  normal  functions  of  the  soul  and  that  it  cannot  fail 
without  disturbing  the  integrity  of  the  life."  The  love  of 
the  beautiful,   not  as   affording   sensuous   gratification   to  the 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  BEAUTY  429 

individual  but  as  having  a  real  and  universal  worth,  and  a 
certain  worshipful  attitude  toward  beauty,  when  properly  cul- 
tivated, make  man  morally  better  by  bringing  him  nearer 
to  the  ideal  of  a  perfect  spiritual  life.  This  truth  applies 
even  to  manners  and  morals  of  the  so-called  practical  sort. 
The  true  gentleman  must  be  something  of  an  artist  in  mat- 
ters of  conduct.  The  purer  happiness  and  the  higher  useful- 
ness of  any  life  depends  in  no  small  degree  upon  the  genuine 
aBsthetical  culture  which  it  receives.  And  all  so-called  "lib- 
eral culture  '^  should  make  provision  for  stirring  and  direct- 
ing an  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  in  nature  and  in  art. 

But  for  reflective  thinking  and  for  philosophical  system,  this 
is  the  supremely  important  truth  which  follows  upon  a  study 
of  man's  aBsthetical  experience  and  gesthetical  development. 
The  appreciation  and  interpretation  of  the  World, — its  Nature, 
as  science  would  say,  its  real  Being,  as  the  uncouth  language 
of  metaphysics  might  express  its  problem, — and  also  of  the 
meaning  and  goal  of  human  life,  cannot  be  gained  in  the 
highest  degree,  without  assthetical  cultivation.  That  Nature, 
as  man's  environment  and  man's  Mother  and  foster-mother,  is 
really  beautiful,  and  has  made  her  child  to  appreciate  and 
judge  the  worth  of  beauty,  is  by  no  means  the  most  insignifi- 
cant of  the  several  voices  which  bear  witness  to  the  Spirit 
that  reveals  itself  as  immanent  and  controlling  in  the  system 
of  selves  and  of  things. 


CHAPTER  XX 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION:   ITS  ORIGIN  IN  EXPERIENCE 

That  man  should  become  a  religious  being  is  made  neces- 
sary both  by  his  constitution  and  by  his  physical  and  social 
environment.  His  spiritual  nature,  whether  it  was  received 
at  the  beginning  as  an  endowment  or  was  achieved  by  many 
thousands  of  years  of  struggle  upward,  demands  the  satisfac- 
tions of  religion  on  the  emotional  and  practical  as  well  as  on 
the  more  purely  intellectual  side.  The  essential  and  supreme 
thing  about  Selfhood  is  the  development  of  a  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  mind.  This  mind  seeks  and  finds,  and 
still  again  seeks  and  finds,  more  and  more  seemingly  valid 
explanations  of  its  own  nature  and  of  that  larger  Nature  in 
whose  lap  it  is  born  and  at  whose  bosom  it  is  nourished  and 
cherished.  But  as  self-conscious  and  self-determining,  it  feels 
the  pressure  and  recognizes  the  obligations  of  ethical  and  aes- 
thetical  impulses,  sentiments,  and  ideals.  Thus  man's  ra- 
tional being — in  the  larger  and  fuller  meaning  of  the  word 
"  rational  " — requires  him,  not  only  to  regard  the  Being  of  the 
World  as  a  system  of  self-like  beings,  standing  in  more  or  less 
intelligible  relations  to  himself  and  to  one  another,  but  also 
to  endow  this  Being  with  some  greater  measure,  however  hid- 
den and  mysterious  in  places,  of  those  spiritual  qualities  which 
he  feels  himself  compelled  to  appreciate,  to  admire,  and  to  imir 
tate.  In  a  word,  man  gives  to  Nature  a  Spirit,  after  the  pat- 
tern of,  and  yet  superior  to,  the  spirit  which  he  consciously 
recognizes  himself  to  be.  Thus'  the  fundamental  belief  of 
religion  is  made  inevitable. 

Why  should  not,  then,  his  attitude  toward  this  Universal 
Spirit  be  one  of  fear  mingled  with  desire  for  friendly  com- 
munion?   Why  should  it  not  include  the  sense  of  mystery  tem- 

430 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  431 

percd  by  the  longing  to  know;  the  appreciation  for  the  mor- 
ally sublime  and  the  sublimely  beautiful  held  in  reserve  or 
disturbed  by  the  doubt  of  ignorance;  the  emotions  of  filial 
affection,  trust,  and  obedience,  darkened,  delayed,  and 
thwarted,  but  finally  triumphing  over  the  obstacles  of  unrea- 
son and  temptation  to  wrong-doing?  Such  is  the  religious 
attitude  of  the  human  spirit  toward  the  Being  of  the  World. 
Therefore,  to  call  it  natural  is  not  to  do  it  dishonor;  it  is,  the 
rather,  to  do  honor  to  the  Spirit,  which  is  immanent  in  Na- 
ture as  well  as  in  the  spirit  of  man. 

When  speaking  of  "  the  religious  consciousness,"  however, 
it  must  not  be  expected  to  find,  on  analyzing  it,  any  wholly 
new  factors  or  forms  of  conscious  activity,  to  which  attention 
has  not  already  been  directed.  Eeligion  is  not  like  a  mansard 
roof  added,  in  compliance  with  a  new  architectural  taste  or 
custom,  to  an  old-fashioned  building  of  a  quite  different  ar- 
chitectural style.  As  long  as  man  has  been  a  speaking,  moral, 
and  social  being,  so  long  has  he  been  also  a  religious  being. 
He  has  been  all  these — if,  waiving  all  ill  supported  conjectures, 
we  plant  ourselves  firmly  on  the  facts  of  human  history,  so 
far  as  these  facts  are  discoverable — so  long  as  he  has  been  a 
true  Self,  a  real  man.  It  is  human,  then,  to  be  religious; 
and,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  as  truly  to  lack  something  impor- 
tant in  the  human  constitution,  not  to  be  religious,  as  it  is  to 
have  no  development  of  the  conscious  ethical  and  sesthetical 
experience.  To  show  the  origin  of  religious  experience,  it  will 
therefore  only  be  necessary  to  point  out  how  all  the  various 
allied  departments  of  human  nature  (if  one  may  be  pardoned 
so  mechanical  a  term)  contribute  to  that  complex  experience 
which  constitutes  the  religious  attitude  toward  the  Being  of 
the  World.  It  will  then  follow  as  a  matter  of  course  that 
this  experience  requires  its  special  and  highly  important  place 
in  any  attempt  at  systematic  philosophy.^ 

1  The  discussions  of  the  following  three  chapters,  and  all  the 
(juotations   not   otherwise   credited,   are  taken   from   the   author's 


432  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  But  what  is  religion  ?  and  By  what  marks  are  we  to  recog- 
nize the  experience  connoted  by  this  term  ?  Some  brief  and 
yet  more  precise  determination  of  the  sphere  of  historical  and 
psychological  research  within  wliich  the  investigation  of  the 
phenomena  proceeds  is  surely  needed  at  this  point.  For  on 
the  one  hand,  there  is  risk  of  framing  too  loose  and  indefinite 
a  conception  of  the  term  religion,  and  so  perhaps  of  identify- 
ing its  sphere  with  the  entire  group  of  ethical  and  aesthetical 
beliefs,  emotions,  and  ideas;  or  with  the  content  of  thought 
and  opinion  belonging  to  philosophy  itself.  While,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  danger  awaits  the  inquiry,  from  confining  the 
examination  to  certain  favored  examples  or  types  of  religion, 
or  from  prematurely  dividing  religions  into  the  lower  and  the 
higher;  or  into  the  wholly  true  and  the  wholly  false.  This 
last  form  of  restricting  the  subject  may  amount  in  the  end  to 
something  quite  different  from  distinguishing  between  truth 
and  half-truth,  or  between  truth  and  falsehood,  in  any  particu- 
lar religion.  It  may  discourage  the  attempt  to  trace  the  de- 
velopment of  the  religious  consciousness  of  humanity  from 
lower  to  higher  stages  in  the  rationality  of  its  conceptions 
and  in  the  purity  of  its  sentiments.  And  surely  the  use  of  the 
psychological  and  historical  method  will  not  permit,  except 
in  a  modified  way,  the  acceptance  of  Eucken's  declaration  that 
*  he  who  concerns  himself  about  religion's  content  of  truth  need 
not  inquire  into  its  darksome  beginnings  nor  trace  its  tedious 
climbings  upward,  but  may  at  once  transport  himself  to  its 
height.  Since  here  the  problem  of  its  truth  first  attains  a  full 
clearness,  and  here  first  gains  a  compelling  power.' " 

In  its  lowest  terms  and  considered  as  universal  with  the 
race,  that  product  of  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining 
mind  of  man  which  is  called  Eeligion,  in  its  effort  to  inter- 
pret the  phenomena  so  as  to  satisfy  certain  rational  impulses 
and  demands,  as  well   as  to  afford  a  rational  basis  for  life, 

Philosophy   of  Religion,    2    vols.    (New   York,    Charles    Scribner's 
Sons,  1905). 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  433 

shows  essentially  the  same  results  of  the  activities  of  the 
human  intellect  as  those  which  are  shown  in  all  other  forms 
of  allied  human  development.  It  may  be  summarized  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Religion  is  the  belief  in  invisible  superhuman  powers 
(or  a  Power)  which  are  (is)  conceived  of  after  the  analogy 
of  the  human  spirit;  on  which  (whom)  man  regards  himself 
as  dependent  for  his  well-being,  and  to  which  (whom)  he  is, 
at  least  in  some  sense  responsible  for  his  conduct;  together 
with  the  feelings  and  practices  which  naturally  follow  from 
such  a  belief." 

It  has  already  been  proved  that  all  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences  recognize  the  more  or  less  self-like  character  of  the 
nature  and  behavior  of  the  things  with  which  they  undertake 
to  deal  in  their  several  special  ways.  Moreover,  if  these  sci- 
ences recognize  the  real  meaning  of  their  more  ulterior  con- 
clusions in  the  form  of  species,  laws,  principles,  and  a  course 
of  development  of  a  plan-full  character  toward  some  sort  of 
goal;  then  they,  of  necessity,  virtually  assume  the  immanence 
of  Mind  in  the  system  of  Things.  Indeed,  the  whole  work  of 
the  particular  sciences  is  a  work  of  interpreting  the  phenom- 
ena in  terms  which  have  meaning  only  for  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  beings,  such  as  human  beings  have  somehow 
come  to  be. 

But  back  of  all  this  work  of  science  lies  the  fundamental 
and — so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive  of  the  subject  at  all — - 
the  unchangeable  nature  of  the  human  mind  as  evinced  by 
the  so-called  categories,  and  by  the  principles  of  mental  pro- 
cedure as  pure  logic  and  pure  mathematics  reveal  those  prin- 
ciples in  terms  of  these  sciences.  The  very  nature  of  all  knowl- 
edge, of  knowledge  as  such,  is  a  species  of  personifying.  It 
is  an  attribution  to  Things  of  activities  and  relations,  the 
complete  nature  and  significance  of  which  are  known  only  in 
terms  of  the  conscious  recognition  of  the  experience  of  the  Self. 
All  knowing  is  interpretation ;  and  all  interpretation  must 
come  down  at  the  last  upon  the  bed-rock  laid  by  Nature  in  the 


434  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

nature  of  the  interpreter.  The  interpreter  is  the  self-conscious 
and  self-determining  mind  of  man.  The  postulate,  then, 
which  saves  all  this  work  of  interpretation,  which  is  called 
"  science,"  from  the  yawning  gulf  of  scepticism,  is  the  assump- 
tion that  the  faith  of  reason  in  itself  is  grounded  in  a  rational 
Universe.  The  rationality  of  lieality  becomes  in  this  way,  at 
the  same  time  the  postulate,  and  also  the  more  and  more  in- 
telligently conceived  and  irrevocably  fixed  conclusion,  of  all 
human  knowledge;  because  it  is  both  discovered  by  a  critical 
theory  of  cognition  and  also  demonstrated  by  all  the  scientific 
progress  of  all  the  particular  sciences. 

Such  a  view  explains  the  remarkable  parity  which  liistory 
shows  between  the  religious  and  the  scientific  development  of 
the  race.  Eeligion  is  not  science,  whatever  one  may  choose 
to  contend  about  the  possibility  of  a  science  of  religion. 
Neither  is  science,  or  scientific  development  alone,  sufficient 
to  originate  or  develope  the  religious  experience.  Indeed,  this 
experience  comes  more  largely  and  surely  out  of  the  ethical  and 
aesthetical  sentiments,  beliefs,  and  ideals,  as  they  are  operative 
and  co-operative  in  human  society.  Here  also, — and,  perhaps, 
here  as  nowhere  else — great  reformers  and  geniuses  have  given 
to  the  race  the  supremely  important  uplift  to  its  spiritual  life 
in  the  religions  domain.  But  both  religious  belief  and  scien- 
tific acquisition  have  liad  this  important  thing  in  common; 
they  have  both  tended  more  and  more  toward  confidence  in 
the  essential  Unity  of  the  World,  in  the  Oneness  of  the  Source 
of  the  Inspiration,  and  of  the  Order,  of  all  things  and  all 
selves,  in  spite  of  many  seeming  discrepancies,  gaps,  faults  in 
the  process,  and  even  contradictions. 

Many  of  the  same  influences  have  operated  upon  Ijotli  science 
and  religion  to  compel  them  to  their  respective  forms  of  faith 
regarding  this  conception  of  "unity"  as  applied  to  the  Being 
of  the  World.  But  especially  true  has  it  been  in  the  most  re- 
cent times  that  the  particular  sciences  have  forced  this  con- 
ception  upon    religion   in   a    somewhat    startlingly   new    form. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  435 

The  invisible  and  superhuman  agency  in  which  religion  be- 
lieves, be  it  one  in  complete  harmony  with  Itself  or  be  it 
divided  between  two  or  more  different,  if  not  contentious  sources, 
has  a  much  bigger  and  more  complex  sphere  to  fill  and  to  con- 
trol than  ever  before.  The  philosophy  of  religion  is  there- 
fore compelled  to  conceive  of  its  Object  in  a  far  grander  and 
more  inclusive  and  magnanimous  way.  But  on  the  other  hand, 
since  it  is  the  religious  consciousness  in  which  all  the  various 
ethical  and  lesthetical,  and  so  the  social  and  practical,  demands 
of  the  human  spirit  mingle  and  culminate;  religion  has  the 
right  to  expect  of  the  particular  sciences  their  support  for  a 
spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe.  Only  by  a  harmony 
between  the  principles  of  science  and  the  faiths  of  religion 
can  the  one  nature  of  man  be  most  fully  expressed  and  satis- 
fied. Only  in  this  way  can  the  Oneness  of  the  Universal 
Nature,  whose  child  man  is,  be  most  satisfactorily  expressed 
and  completely  understood. 

The  various  low'er  species  of  religion,  such  as  spiritism  in 
the  form  of  Shamanism  or  in  any  of  its  other  varied  forms ; 
or  such  as  all  the  different  polytheisms;  or  such  as  the  higher 
species  of  Nature-worship,  when  it  has  partially  escaped  tlie 
degradation  of  spiritism  and  polytheism ;  or  as  Ancestor- 
worship  in  its  ethically  nobler  beliefs  and  practices; — these 
are  all  doomed  by  the  very  nature  of  the  intellectual  progress 
of  the  race  to  give  way  before  a  spiritual  ]\Ionotheism.  That 
the  Divine  Being  of  the  world  must  be  conceived  of,  wor- 
shipped, and  obeyed,  as  One,  is  as  inevitable  as  is  the  growing 
certainty  of  the  spiritual  unity  of  the  race ;  and  of  the  Unity 
in  Eeality  of  all  things  and  selves  in  this  world.  Neither  of 
these  assumed  unities  can  as  yet  be  said  to  be  a  demonstrated 
truth,  after  the  pattern  of  mathematics  and  the  more  exact 
of  the  empirical  sciences.  Perhaps,  from  the  very  nature  of 
the  case,  neither  of  them,  as  they  enter  into  the  faith  of  re- 
ligion and  into  the  kindred  faith  of  science,  ever  will  receive 
a   demonstration  of  the   kind  which  Kant  called  apodeictic; 


436  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  which  certain  kinds  of  agnosticism  require  as  a  basis  for 
knowledge.  But  the  conviction  that  they  are  true  is  gaining 
evidence  from  the  growth  of  every  kind  of  human  knowledge. 

It  is,  however,  in  the  sentiments,  conceptions,  and  ideals  of 
resthetical,  but  above  all,  of  ethical  consciousness  (in  the  large 
meaning  of  the  word  ethical)  that  a  spiritual  Monism  finds 
both  its  source,  and  its  guarantee,  as  well  as  its  motives  for 
practical  efficiency.  For  it  is  an  historical  fact  that  all  the 
greater  religions,  and  especially  among  them  all,  the  Chris- 
tian religion,  have  come  to  regard  the  world-system  of  things 
and  selves,  when  considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  reflective 
thinking,  as  the  manifestation  of  One  perfect,  indwelling 
Ethical   Spirit. 

How  this  conclusion  of  the  more  highly  developed  religious 
experience  of  the  race  has  come  about,  it  is  not  our  purpose  at 
present  to  examine.  Indeed,  the  examination  belongs  to  the 
study  of  comparative  religion,  in  its  historical  processes,  rather 
than  to  systematic  philosophy.  But  a  brief  survey  of  the  ex- 
perience, in  which  the  beliefs,  sentiments  and  practical  activi- 
ties of  religion  have  their  origin  and  justification  is  necessary 
to  lay  the  psychological  basis  for  any  valid  philosophy  of  re- 
ligion. 

Beginning  with  that  which  is  most  obscure  and  lowest,  but 
not  least  powerful,  we  note  certain  impulsive  and  more  purely 
emotional  sources  of  religious  experience.  These  obscure  im- 
pulses and  feelings  do  not  afford  conscious  reasons  or  intel- 
lectual justifications  for  religious  belief;  but  they  operate 
none  the  less  powerfully  for  all  that.  In  this  respect  they  are 
not  unlike  all  the  more  basic  and  definitely  psycho-physical 
functions  of  the  Self,  both  as  an  organism  and  as  a  conscious 
mind.  Of  late,  the  phenomena  of  religious  experience,  when 
studied  from  the  biological  and  economic  points  of  view,  have 
been  thought  to  show  in  a  marked  degree  the  influence  of  the 
"  instinct  of  self-preservation,"  so-called.  This  motive,  so  far 
as  it  exists  at  all  and  is  effective  in  human  religious  experi- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  437 

ence,  is  almost  as  complex  and  ill-defined  an  affair  as  ia 
Schopenhauer's  "  will  to  live."  But  both  terms — "  the  in- 
stinct of  preservation  "  and  "  the  will  to  live  " — may,  con- 
veniently enough  and  with  considerable  propriety,  be  used  to 
cover  a  group  of  subtle  and  powerful  psychical  influences 
which  compel  man  to  the  beliefs  and  practices  of  religion. 
The  desire  and  the  experienced  need  of  protecting  and  cherish- 
jng  the  interests  of  a  complex  life  is  much  greater  and  more  in- 
xense  in  the  case  of  man  than  in  that  of  any  of  the  lower 
unimals.  And  as  man  more  and  more  realizes  his  true  Self, 
/nd  so  feels  in  an  enlarged  manner  the  natural  impulse  to 
protect  it,  and  to  employ  "  the  will  to  live  "  in  the  interests 
of  the  higher  life,  these  impulses  blossom  into  the  more  intelli- 
gent and  self-conscious  form  of  a  search  for,  and  an  increased 
evaluation  of,  the  religious  as  well  as  the  ethical  and  aesthet- 
ical  ideals.  Thus  religion  springs  and  developes  perennially 
out  of  the  desire  of  man  to  "  better  himself."  It  is  this 
"  sense  of  unrest,  the  ceaseless  longing  for  something  else " 
(and  better)  "  which  is  the  general  source  of  all  desires  and 
wishes,"  and  "  also  the  source  of  all  endeavor  and  all  prog- 
ress," in  which  some  writers  find  the  most  primary  and  pow- 
erful impulse  to  religion.  It  was  a  suggestive  saying  of  Hum- 
boldt :  "  All  religion  rests  on  a  need  of  the  soul ;  we  hope,  we 
dread,  because  we  wish."  And  the  insatiable  nature  of  human 
cravings,  when  once  the  mind  and  will  of  man  have  been  roused 
to  effort  at  attaining  a  full  satisfaction  for  themselves,  is  un- 
doubtedly an  exhaustless  source  of  the  religious  life.  There  is, 
without  doubt,  quite  truth  enough  in  the  pessimistic  philosophy 
of  Schopenhauer  and  von  Hartmann  to  make  it  sure  that  such 
cravings  can  never  be  satisfied  simply  by  improving  the  eco- 
nomic resources  and  utilitarian  conditions  of  the  race. 

No  candid  student  of  the  phenomena  of  religious  experience 
is  now  ready  to  accept  as  wholly  true  the  ancient  saying  (at- 
tributed to  Petronius)  :  "  Fear  first  made  the  gods."  But  the 
emotion  of  fear  is,  especially  in  the  earlier  and  wider  forms 


438  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  man's  evolution  of  religion,  an  effective  impulse.  No 
other  being  has  so  many  justifiable  fears  as  has  man;  for  no 
other  has  such  a  variety  of  interests  which  he  knows  to  be 
subject  momently  to  dangers  from  many  sources.  For  the 
savage  or  unscientific  man,  the  sources  of  most  of  these  fears 
are  largely  unknown  or  wholly  mysterious;  for  all  men,  they 
are  either  diflficult  of  their  own  control,  or  even  beyond  all 
possibility  of  human  control.  Being  unseen,  they  are  of  neces- 
sity attributed  to  spiritual  agencies;  for  even  when  it  is  poi- 
sonous serpents,  or  violent  winds,  or  tidal  waves  and  volcanic 
eruptions,  it  is  the  spirit  which  is  in  the  visible  phenomena 
that  accomplishes  the  harm.  For  the  same  reason,  attacks 
from  zymotic  diseases,  or  those  due  to  mal-nutrition,  especially 
if  the}^  assume  a  pestilential  form,  are  most  naturally  ascribed 
to  gods  who  are,  for  some  wholly  unknown  or  half-suspected 
reason,  angry  with  men.  With  these  dreaded  invisible  and 
spiritual  agencies,  therefore,  man  must  keep  on  good  terms, 
if  he  would  live  happily  or  even  live  at  all. 

But  as  said  Spinoza :  "  There  is  no  hope  without  fear,  as 
there  is  no  fear  without  hope."  And  if  the  gods  or  devils  can 
be  propitiated,  then  hope  may  take  the  place  of  fear.  What  is 
more  significant  and  promising,  however,  on  the  side  of  hope, 
is  the  fact  that  genuine  social  feelings  of  the  kindlier  type 
may  reasona])ly  be  cherished  as  between  the  invisible  super- 
human spirits  and  the  spirit  of  man.  In  very  ancient  times, 
and  in  many  widely  separated  countries,  these  kindly  social 
feelings  between  gods  and  men  have  been  expressed  and  cul- 
,  tivated  by  the  communal  feast,  and  in  other  ways.  In  these 
social  feelings  Pfleiderer  finds  the  most  potent  emotional  fac- 
tors of  Aryan  religion.  Many  of  the  most  ancient  of  the 
Vedic  hymns  express  these  feelings  in  no  doubtful  manner. 
In  Japan  to-day  the  deified  ancestor  is  bound  religiously  to 
his  living  descendants  by  bonds  of  sentiment  that  are  dis- 
tinguished chiefly  by  reverence  and  affection  rather  than  fear. 
The   dreaded   cobra   in   India,   the   rattlesnake   among   certain 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RKLIGION  430 

tribes  of  tho  Redskins,  tlie  hideous  idol  among  the  Mexicans, 
and  the  ragged  and  dirty  puppet  among  tlic  Christians  of 
Southern  Europe,  may  represent  that  side  of  the  divine  being 
which  awakens  the  kindlier  domestic  and  social  emotions. 

Of  tlie  more  intellectual  of  the  impulses  in  which  religion 
finds  tlie  psychological  causes  of  its  origin  and  development, 
the  chief  is  that  curiosity  to  know,  which  is  associated  so  in- 
separably with  the  feeling  of  dependence.  We  certainly  cannot 
attribute  man's  chief  interest  in  religion,  as  von  Hartmann 
does,  to  a  "  disinterested  observation  of  the  heavenly  phenom- 
ena and  of  their  relations  to  earthly  conditions."  Yet  something 
is  to  be  said  in  favor  of  those  writers  who  oppose  to  the  deriva- 
tion of  religion  from  feeling  alone,  the  counter  statement  that 
intellectual  curiosity,  with  its  accompaniment  of  naive  and  in- 
stinctive metaphysics,  is  the  very  core  and  spring  of  man's 
personality,  so  far  as  his  religious  life  is  concerned.  "In  all 
stages  of  civilization,"  says  one  of  these  writers,  "  among  all 
races  of  mankind,  religious  emotions  are  always  aroused  by 
the  same  inward  impulse,  the  necessity  for  discerning  a  cause 
or  author  for  every  phenomenon  or  event."  To  place  the  in- 
tellectual before  the  emotional  in  this  way  may  be  a  reversal 
of  the  order  of  nature;  but  on  the  other  hand,  without  the  in- 
fluence of  intellectual  curiosity  and  the  spontaneous  and  naive 
positing  of  realities  to  act  as  causes  in  accounting  for  the 
changes  in  the  phenomena  experienced,  not  even  the  lowest 
form  of  religion  known  as  a  vague  and  unreflecting  Spiritism 
could  ever  have  arisen.  Two  considerations  should  be  borne  in 
mind  in  order  to  a  better  understanding  of  this  subject.  The 
human  mind  is  to  itself  a  mysterious  being  living  in  the  midst 
of  a  mysterious  environment.  It  is  dependent  for  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  interests  upon  the  character  of  its  reactions  to  this 
environment.  In  order  to  react  aright  it  must  know  both  it- 
self and  its  environment.  There  is  therefore  every  reason  in 
man's  dependence  upon  nature  to  stimulate  his  curiosity  re- 
specting its  invisible  and  superhuman  agencies.     In  the  case  of 


440  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

primitive  or  savage  man  this  reason  is  greatly  exaggerated  by 
the  fact  that  he  has  little  or  no  conception  of  nature  such  as 
modern  science  cherishes,  as  an  orderly  system  of  interacting 
causes  under  the  principles  of  continuity  and  uniformity.  All 
the  more  reason,  then,  why  he  should  believe  in  the  causal 
action  of  the  invisible  and  superhuman,  and  should  seek  to 
discover  and  interpret  to  his  profit  the  modes  of  their  opera- 
tion. 

"  It  would  be  a  mistake,  however,  to  suppose  that  the  intel- 
lectual curiosity  of  even  the  savage  or  primitive  man  is  lim- 
ited to  those  events  which  he  has  reason  most  to  hope  for  or 
to  dread.  A  belief  in  creator  gods,  and  the  mixture  of  cos- 
mogonic  myths  and  theories  with  religious  beliefs  and  stories 
of  the  invisible  powers  or  supernal  deities,  are  found  very  low 
down,  if  not  universally  existent,  in  the  religions  of  mankind. 

"  All  these  impulsive  and. emotional  sources  of  religion,  when 
considered  as  co-operative,  and  even  when  supplemented  by  any 
number  of  similar  sources,  will  not  suffice  to  account  for  the 
nature  of  the  object  of  religious  belief;  nor,  indeed,  do  they 
tell  us  why  any  such  object  is  in  fact  posited  by  the  mind  of 
man.  Impulses  and  emotional  disturbances  do  not  of  them- 
selves furnish  the  ideas  of  the  religious  experience;  much  less 
do  they  create  the  ideals  of  the  higher  forms  of  this  experience. 
Such  stimuli  can  only  incite  and  prompt  imagination  and 
thought  to  do  this  work  of  creation.  In  a  word,  it  is  reason 
that  must  construct  the  Object  of  religious  faith ;  and  this  act 
of  construction  must  be  based  upon,  and  supported  constantly 
by,  the  faith  of  reason  in  its  power  to  reach  Reality.  We  turn, 
therefore,  to  the  study  of  the  religious  consciousness  of  man 
as  rational  and  free, — as  the  experience  of  a  self-conscious  and 
self-determining  mind." 

The  confessedly  vague  terms,  rational  and  rationality,  with 
so  much  of  freedom,  and  of  the  intellectual  and  emotional  at- 
titudes toward  scientific,  moral,  and  sesthetical  ideals,  as  they 
properly   include,   have    already   been    defined    with   sufficient 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  441 

detail  and  clearness  for  our  present  purpose.  In  respect  of 
those  sources  of  religion  which  have  already  been  recognized, 
man  dilTers  in  no  essential  respect,  but  only  in  variety  and  de- 
gree, from  the  lower  animals.  The  fundamental  and  perma- 
nent difference  has  relation  to  the  Object  of  his  religious  belief. 
The  complex  and  lofty  conception  which  becomes  the  goal  and 
determines  the  course  of  man's  religious  experience  cannot  by 
any  possibility  get  itself  constructed  within  the  consciousness 
of  tlie  lower  animals.  The  reason  for  the  failure  of  any 
species  of  the  lower  animals  to  be  religious,  as  all  men  are 
religious,  is  then  chiefly  their  lack  of  those  rational  activities 
which  are  necessary  in  order  to  make  objective  the  grounds  of 
the  religious  impulses  and  emotions.  Only  a  human  intellect 
and  imagination  could  frame  the  conception  of  real  but  super- 
human spirits;  only  a  human  conscience  could  locate  the  moral 
quality  of  conduct  in  relations  of  obligation  and  approbation 
(or  their  opposites)  to  these  spirits;  only  human  eesthetical 
and  ethical  sentiments  and  ideals,  keeping  pace  with  the 
growth  of  intellect  and  imagination,  could  develope  that  ideal 
of  a  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  which  is  the  culminating  product 
of  man's  religious  progress.  In  a  word,  only  a  Self,  such  as 
the  human  being  is,  but  the  lower  animal  is  not,  could  achieve 
the  religious  attitude  toward  an  infinite  and  absolute  and 
morally  perfect  Other  Self.  This  attitude,  when  made  ra- 
tional, is  the  crowning  achievement  of  humanity  under  the 
Divine  Self-Revelation. 

The  metaphysical  postulate  which  underlies  and  makes 
valid  all  man's  rational  activities  is  the  reality  of  the  object, 
in  the  cognitive  judgment  about  which  these  activities  termi- 
nate. This  is  as  true  in  the  sphere  of  religious  experience  as  it 
is  in  all  forms  of  complex  human  experience.  As  Kant  points 
out,  the  nervvs  prohandi  of  all  the  so-called  arguments  for  the 
Being  of  God  is  the  "  ontological  argument."  But  this  ia 
equally  true  of  all  kinds  of  argument,  without  distinction  in 
the  subjects  about  which  the  proof  is  sought  and  assumed  to 


442  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

be  found,.  The  major  premise,  or  assumption  based  upon  the 
faith  of  human  reason  in  itself,  which  underlies  and  supports 
all  the  conclusions  with  regard  to  the  nature,  the  doings,  and 
the  relations  of  both  things  and  selves,  may  therefore  be  stated 
in  some  such  way  as  the  following :  "  What  is  so  connected 
with  our  experience  of  reality  as  that  it  is  essential  to  explain 
this  experience  satisfactorily,  is  itself  believed  to  be  real."  This 
assumption  of  man's  "  ontological  consciousness,"  of  his  meta- 
physics whether  naive  or  scientific,  is  the  bed-rock  which  un- 
derlies all  the  pathways  along  which  the  human  mind  makes 
its  excursions   into  the  Being   of  the   World. 

The  false  opinions,  mistakes,  and  superstitions,  which  so 
cloud  and  pervert  the  judgments  of  savage  and  primitive  man, 
and  which  linger  on  to  the  restriction  and  distorting  of  the 
religious  creeds,  institutions,  and  practices  of  the  most  en- 
lightened nations,  are  not  essentially — that  is,  logically  or 
metaphysically — different  from  the  same  workings  of  ontological 
consciousness  in  all  other  spheres.  Religion  has  no  monopoly 
of  prejudice,  error,  and  practical  folly.  The  pathway  along 
which  the  most  exact  sciences  have  moved  to  higher  stages 
of  evolution  is  strewn  with  the  same  kind  of  mental  debris 
and  wreckage.  It  is'  largely  by  correcting  their  mistakes  that 
l)o(h  religion  and  science  rise  to  higher  stages  of  knowledge 
and  successful  endeavor.  Nor  are  the  spirit  in  which,  and  the 
motives  from  which,  they  undertake  their  different  tasks,  alto- 
gether different. 

This  procedure  of  the  ontological  consciousness  in  religion 
is  perfectly  natural;  instead  of  being  irrational,  it  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  reason  itself.  It  is  precisely  similar  to  the 
procedure  of  science  in  every  form  of  its  vast  productivity 
and  wonderful  development,  down  to  the  present  time.  Tiie 
invisible  superhuman  spirits  are  as  necessary  to  the  savage,  in 
order  to  explain  his  experience,  as  the  invisible  atoms,  or  radio- 
active molecules,  are  necessary  to  explain  the  experience  of  the 
modern  chemist  or  physicist.     Who   shall  say  with  an  entire 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  443 

confidence,  as  yet,  that  the  one  assumption  is  not  as  rational 
as  tlio  other?  Or,  hotter:  INIa}'  not  hotli  ways  of  lookin-,'  at 
Reality  he  sometime  subsumed  under  some  larger  conception 
of  the  World's  Unity? 

"  It  appears,  then,  that  religious  belief,  for  its  form  and 
development,  and  indeed  for  its  very  existence,  can  never  be 
rendered  independent  of  metaphysics.  All  religious  experience 
implies  an  irresistible  conviction  of  a  commerce  with  Reality; 
it  cannot  arise  without  either  a  naive  and  instinctive,  or  a  dis- 
ciplined and  systematic  exercise  of  the  ontological  conscious- 
ness. The  cultivation  of  the  so-called  ontological  conscious- 
ness has,  therefore,  an  important  influence  on  the  religious 
evolution  of  humanity.  In  fact,  the  rational  culture  of  any 
race,  or  epoch,  has  invariably  been  marked  by  schools  of  re- 
ligious philosophy  and  of  theology;  and  these  scliools  have 
profoundly  influenced  the  religions  of  the  time; — flrst  of  all, 
through  the  tlioughtful  few  of  the  existing  general  ion,  and 
then  through  the  large  multitude  of  the  less  thouglitful  and  of 
the  succeeding  generations.  In  India,  every  important  school 
of  metaphysical  philosophy  was  early  represented ;  and  every 
school  has  left  its  traces  on  the  religious  beliefs  and  practices 
of  the  people  of  India  down  to  the  present  time.  Everywhere, 
though  not  to  the  same  extent,  the  influence  of  the  great  meta- 
physical thinkers  of  the  race  has  continued  over  the  religious 
beliefs,  sentiments,  and  practices  of  the  succeeding  ages,  in  a 
most  powerful  way.  The  metaphysical  speculations  of  the 
Eleatics  and  of  the  Sceptics  influenced  the  religions  of  the 
Greek  world;  Plato  and  Aristotle  powerfully  moulded  the  re- 
ligious experience  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

"  In  vain  are  men  exhorted  to  be  satisfied  with  saying  the  same 
prayers  and  singing  the  same  sacred  songs;  they  continue  to 
divide  and  subdivide  their  religions  on  ontological  grounds. 
The  importance  of  subtle  and  minute  metaphysical  distinctions 
in  religious  opinion  is,  indeed,  often  overestimated;  the  failure 
to  recognize  what  is  common  to  all,  and  to  exercise  charity  with 


444  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

respect  to  differences  of  belief,  has  doubtless  resulted  in  much 
loss  to  the  religious  life  as  an  essentially  spiritual  and  practical 
affair.  But  the  history  of  man's  religious  development  confirms 
what  the  psychology  of  the  religious  experience  enables  us 
the  better  to  understand; — namely,  that  the  Object  of  re- 
ligious faith  and  worship  must  ever  be  regarded  as  something 
about  whose  real  Being  man  must  unceasingly  strive  to  know. 
A  proposed  belief  in  mere  phenomena  as  divine,  has  about  it 
characteristics  so  disturbing,  that  even  its  temporary  holding 
tends  to  provoke  the  laughter  with  which  our  mind  greets 
the  discovery  that  the  ghost  which  has  awakened  its  fears  is 
only,  after  all,  existent  in  its  own  eye.  It  is  never,  then,  any 
particular  system  of  metaphysics  which  is  the  most  dangerous 
opponent  of  religious  faith.  It  is,  the  rather,  the  denial  of 
all  possible  trustworthiness  in  religion  to  man's  ontological 
consciousness.  The  fundamental  error  of  dogmatic  or  scep- 
tical agnosticism,  we  have  seen  to  be  the  assumption  that  the 
so-called  categories,  or  constitutional  forms  of  human  cogni- 
tion, are  inescapable  limitations,  if  not  the  fruitful  sources  of 
illusion,  for  all  human  attempts  at  a  knowledge  of  Reality. 
Thus  the  grand  result  of  the  cosmic  processes  which  terminate 
in  man  is  a  being  whose  crowning  glory  is  to  be  the  discoverer, 
critic,  and  self-convicted  dupe,  of  his  own  rational  nature. 
In  a  word,  the  claim  to  be  rational  stands  self-condemned,  as 
inherently  self-contradictory  and  irrational. 

"  This  belief  in  reality,  as  it  extends  to  the  peculiarly  re- 
ligious forms  of  belief,  and  has  its  genesis — so  the  theory  of 
knowledge  has  taught  us — in  the  experience  of  a  self-active 
will  opposed  by,  and  in  commerce  with,  other  wills,  cannot  of 
itself  give  form  or  rational  content  to  the  conception  of  the 
Object  of  religious  faith.  It  is  the  activity  of  man's  imagina- 
tion and  intellect  which  accomplishes  this.  It  is  by  the  com- 
bination of  these  so-called  faculties  of  the  mind  that  the  ob- 
jects of  all  forms  of  religious  belief  and  worship  are  more 
definitely  shaped." 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  445 

As  in  all  kinds  of  human  experience  which  are  influenced 
by  ideals,  so  above  all  in  religion,  the  function  of  Imagination 
is  of  primary  and  pre-eminent  importance.  This  is  true  even 
when  there  is  included  under  the  term  both  the  lighter  and 
more  illogical  play  of  fancy,  and  also  the  more  serious  logical 
work  of  the  creative  imagination,  as  the  latter  is  controlled 
by  a  stricter  regard  for  the  undoubted  facts  of  experience 
and  for  the  confessed  limitations  of  human  understanding. 
Indeed,  no  fixed  line  can  be  drawn  between  the  two; — whether 
regard  is  had  chiefly  to  distinctions  in  the  mental  activity 
involved,  or  to  distinctions  in  the  characteristics  of  the  prod- 
ucts resulting. 

In  the  same  stages  of  civilization,  therefore,  we  find  the 
grotesque  and  grewsome  divinities  of  unrestrained  fancy  and 
the  "  creator  gods,"  or  "  heavenly  powers,"  whose  mental 
representation  requires  the  higher  and  more  strenuous  activi- 
ties of  imagination,  existing  side  by  side  in  the  popular  belief. 
The  former  are,  indeed,  the  more  popular  and  more  sought 
after  in  the  daily  life  of  the  average  man.  This  is  not  so 
much  because  the  worshippers  are  deficient  in  intellectual 
power  to  know  better,  as  because  the  lesser  divinities  are  of 
more  utilitarian  value  and  more  intimate  and  constant  con- 
cern. To  know  what  devil  or  protecting  deity  can  inflict  or 
cure  small-pox,  or  can  help  one  kill  his  enemy  or  succeed  in 
adultery  and  theft,  is  more  immediately  important  than  to 
know  what  kind  of  a  god  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth. 
In  the  civilization  of  ancient  Greece,  where  both  intellect  and 
imagination  attained  the  power  to  achieve  much  wliich  has 
never  been  surpassed,  an  almost  aesthetically  perfect  mythology 
existed  cotemporaneously  with  an  elaborate  religious  philos- 
ophy. Plato  regards  the  gods  of  mythology  as  creatures  of 
imagination;  and  Aristotle  thinks  that  most  of  the  state  re- 
ligion is  myth,  due  to  anthropomorphic  reprepentations  and 
justified  only  by  political  motives.  But  neither  Plato,  nor 
Aristotle,   nor  any  modern  thinker,   can  cultivate  either  sci- 


446  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ence,  or  philosophy,  or  religion,  without  trusting  to  the  power 
of  human  imagination  in  its  claim  to  represent  the  realities  im- 
mediately known  or  indirectly  implicated  in  human  cognitive 
experience.  If  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind 
were  not  endowed  with  creative  imagination  it  could  neither 
picture  the  Being  of  the  World  as  science  conceives  of  It,  nor 
construct  the  image  of  God  as  monotheistic  religion  believes  in 
Him. 

It  has  been  customary  in  certain  quarters  to  speak  of  pure 
imagination  with  a  certain  tone  of  contempt;  and,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  praise  the  purity  of  freedom  from  imagination,  of  the 
intellectual  processes  of  modern  science.  No  such  purity,  how- 
ever, can  possibly  exist  in  the  functions  of  either  of  these  two 
allied  and  co-operative  forms  of  man's  cognitive  faculty.  The 
creative  imagination,  which  is  the  highest  and  most  important 
activity  of  the  human  mind  in  representing  to  itself  the  truths 
of  reality,  becomes  relatively  pure,  only  when  it  is  freed  from 
the  limitations  of  concrete  facts  and  particular  examples,  in 
order  to  depict  general  types  or  universal  laws  and  principles. 
It  is  to  the  attaining  of  such  freedom  that  the  highest  efforts 
of  science  are  chiefly  directed.  But  in  attaining  this  kind  of 
purity,  tb.e  imagination  stands  in  constant  and  special  need 
of  those  intellectual  processes  which  first  secure  a  collection 
of  accurately  observed  facts;  and  then  require  the  exercise  of 
caution  and  sanity  and  skill  in  the  experimental  testing  of 
facts  and  in  their  logical  arrangement  and  concatenation.  Rep- 
resentation demands  the  purification  of  its  products  by 
thought ;  in  order  that  either  knowledge  or  a  rational  belief 
may  be  attained  by  the  mind.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  the  real 
world  is  not  a  heterogeneous  assemblage  or  unordered  series 
of  occurrences  and  existences,  to  be  taken  note  of  as  mere 
facts;  it  is  the  rather,  a  construction  in  which  ideas,  and  ideals, 
of  law,  order,  and  harmony,  take  a  conspicuous  part.  It  re- 
quires, therefore,  the  creative  imagination  of  the  observer,  in 
order  to  apprehend  and  reconstruct  it  as  it  really  is.     But,  on 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  417 

the  other  hand,  this  creative  activity  of  imagination  must 
freely  and  joyfully  limit  itself  by  intelligence  touching  the 
real  beings,  and  natural  occurrences  and  relations,  of  this  same 
world. 

This  relation  of  mutual  assistance  between  imagination  and 
thought  is  as  true  for  religion  as  it  is  for  science.  Indeed, 
religion  stands  in  special  need  of  a  process  of  separation  and 
purification  for  the  work  which  it  calls  upon  the  creative 
inuigination  to  perform;  and  the  chief  reasons  for  this  need 
arc  the  following  two:  Its  primary  beliefs  are  essentially  of 
the  in-visible,  the  non-sensible,  the  somehow  super-human,  the 
Self  that  is  other  than  myself.  Moreover,  the  practical  and 
emotional  interests  to  which  the  work  of  the  religious  imagina- 
tion is  committed  are  so  immediate  and  pressing  as  the  more 
easily  to  override  the  considerations  upon  which  the  scientific 
development  of  man  lays  such  peculiar  emphasis.  Superstitious 
beliefs,  born  of  unworthy  and  irrational  hopes  and  fears  and 
desires,  have  neyer  been  confined  to  religion.  But,  in  religion, 
on  account  of  its  very  nature^  they  have  been  most  potent  and 
difficult  to  modify  or  to  remove.  Hence,  the  necessity,  but  also 
the  embarrassment  and  the  delicacy,  of  the  task  of  improving 
the  work  of  imagination  in  the  construction  of  an  Object  of 
religious  belief  which  shall  worthily  fit  in  with  the  system  of 
human  experience,  rationally  regarded  and,  as  far  as  possible, 
scientifically  explained. 

"  An  essential  part,  therefore,  of  the  thought-factor  in  man's 
religious  life  and  development,  consists  in  the  application,  to 
the  Object  of  faith,  of  the  psychological  laws  which  control 
the  explanation  of  all  classes  of  experience.  It  scarcely  need 
be  said  again  that  these  laws  always  apply  in  the  religious 
domain,  in  close  and  inseparable  union  with  the  beliefs  of 
ontological  consciousness.  Experience  must  be  explained — 
whether  religious  or  otherwise — in  accordance  with  the  concep- 
tions and  laws  of  '  efficient  cause '  and  of  '  final  purpose.* 
For  man  knows  himself  as  a  will,  self-determining  in  his  pur- 


448  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

pose  to  realize  ends;  and  he  has  no  other  way  of  constituting 
the  being,  or  explaining  the  behavior,  of  the  world  of  exist- 
ences outside  himself,  except  that  offered  by  the  analogy  of  this 
knowledge  of  himself.  Efficient  causes,  behaving  according  to 
ideas  of  order  and  consistency  in  the  realization  of  ends,  must 
be  invoked  to  explain  the  world  anthropomorphically  (and 
such  is  man's  only  way  of  explanation),  whether  they  are 
located  in  big  things,  or  in  little  atoms,  in  mere  things,  or  in 
men,  or  in  the  gods.  All  kinds  of  real  beings,  that  seem  to 
afford,  help  in  the  explanation,  are  necessarily  thought  of,  if 
thought  of  at  all,  under  the  conceptions  and  terms  furnished 
by  the  same  psychological  laws. 

"  It  is,  however,  the  business  of  intellect  to  criticize  the  proc- 
ess of  anthropomorphizing,  to  prune  it  unceasingly  and  un- 
sparingly, and  to  force  it  without  fear  or  favor,  constantly 
to  readjust  itself  to  the  growing  experience  of  the  race.  This 
is  not  best  done,  either  by  relinquishing  all  hope  of  knowledge 
of  Eeality,  that  it  is  and  what  it  is,  or  by  giving  free  rein  to 
fancy  in  religion,  under  the  false  and  fatal  impression  that 
science  and  religion  may  remain  at  peace  with  each  other  while 
retaining,  not  merely  different  but  even  conflicting  and  con- 
tradictory, views  of  the  one  world.  This  world  is  man's 
world;  and  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind  of 
man  cannot  remain  in  conflict  with  itself,  whether  as  respects 
its  intellectual  or  its  practical  interests.  This  same  mind, 
therefore,  acting  as  a  creative  imagination  and  as  an  intellect 
that  seeks,  under  the  psychological  laws  which  all  attempts  to 
extend  the  sphere  of  human  knowledge  must  perforce  obey,  to 
understand  the  grounds  of  its  own  experience; — this  same 
mind  constructs  the  Object  of  religious  belief  and  worship. 

"  But  the  uplift  of  higher  forms  of  feeling  than  those  which 
have  already  been  examined  must  be  recognized,  and  their 
influence  and  value  to  convey  the  truth  about  the  Being  of 
the  World  must  be  duly  estimated,  before  it  is  possible  to  ac- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  449 

count  for  the  important  religious  trutli  that  this  Object  finally 
attains  the  shape  of  an  ethical  and  aesthetical  Ideal.  For  it 
is  in  fact  these  higher  forms  of  feeling  under  whose  impulse 
and  guidance  man  comes  to  believe  in  and  to  worship  One 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit  as  the  true  and  Alone  God. 

"  At  this  point  we  must  of  course  refer  back  to  our  analysis 
of  the  ethical  and  aesthetical  sentiments  and  judgments,  and 
to  our  estimate  of  their  value  in  contributing  to  the  race's 
stock  of  knowledge  respecting  the  constitution  and  meaning 
of  the  system  of  things  and  selves;  and  also  to  the  history  of 
the  race's  religious  experience,  which  shows  how  the  Ideal  of 
religion,  to  which  reference  has  just  been  made,  has  actually 
been  achieved  by  a  process  of  development." 

Beginning  with  aesthetical  sentiments,  we  note  how  the  feel- 
ing for  the  sublime,  and  its  natural  accompaniment  of  a 
sense  of  awe,  mystery,  admiration  and  the  "  painfully-pleas- 
urable sense "  of  helplessness  and  dependence,  is  one  of  the 
most  fruitful  sources  of  religious  belief  and  worship.  This  is, 
indeed,  primarily  the  logic  of  feeling;  but  it  is  the  logic  of 
thought  as  well.  The  grandeur  of  beauty  in  Nature  suggests 
and  seems  to  prove  to  the  appreciative  spirit  of  man,  a  grandly 
beautiful  Spirit  as  immanent  in,  and  manifesting  itself 
through,  natural  existences,  forces,  forms,  and  relations.  All 
the  other  forms  of  aesthetical  feeling,  which  are  awakened  by 
different  kinds  of  beauty,  may  also  be  awakened  and  cultivated 
in  the  interests  of  religion.  They  are  all,  moreover,  capable 
of  almost  unlimited  development.  For,  in  the  language  of 
Kant,  we  seem  here  to  be  dealing  with  a  spiritual  faculty, 
"  which  surpasses  every  standard  of  sense."  And  in  this  field 
the  creative  imagination  feels  justified  in  stretching  its  efl'orts 
beyond  all  the  limitations  which  the  more  prosaic,  mechanical, 
and  matter-of-fact  observations  of  natural  structures  and 
processes  impose.  Yet  here  again  there  is  a  certain  parity  be- 
tween the  conception  awakened  in  the  religious  consciousness 


450  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

and  those  with  which  the  chemico-physical  sciences  are  familiar 
enough.  The  common  ground  of  their  meeting  is  in  the  ass- 
thetical  nature  of  man. 

The  moral  sentiments  and  judgments  are  even  more  power- 
ful in  their  influence  over  religious  belief,  and  over  the  mental 
attitudes  and  practices  with  reference  to  the  invisible,  super- 
human agency,  in  which  the  essence  of  man's  religious  experi- 
ence is  to  be  found.  In  the  broader,  but  more  appropriate 
meaning  of  both  terms,  it  is  not  true  that  the  ethical  and  the 
religious  have  ever  been  divorced.  Both  negatively  and  posi- 
tively, the  lowest  forms  of  religious  faith  and  practice  to  which 
the  history  of  the  race  bears  witness,  have  invariably  had  some- 
thing— and,  indeed,  much — to  say  as  to  what  is  proper  in 
conduct  and  in  character.  Not  all  tabu  has  a  definitely  moral 
significance.  But  in  the  case  of  primitive  and  savage  man, 
the  line  between  "  better-not,"  because  you  are  likely  to  be 
hurt,  and  "  must-not,"  because  you  "  ought-not,"  is  never  very 
strictly  drawn.  In  general,  religious  ceremonial  incorporates 
both  these  forms  of  the  tabu.  The  same  moral  significance 
attaches  itself  to  what  has  been  called  the  religious  act  of 
"expropriation" — or  the  devotion  to  the  gods  of  something 
which  has  value  for  the  offerer.  On  the  positive  side,  all  re- 
ligions enforce  with  the  moral  feeling  of  obligation,  as  well  as 
with  the  inferior  motive  of  fear,  the  various  forms  of  gift, 
prayer,  sacrament,  rites  and  religious  austerities. 

When  the  Divine  Being  is  conceived  of  as  a  sort  of  moral 
unity,  whether  in  the  impersonal  form  of  the  Hindu  Atman  or 
World-Soul,  or  in  the  yet  more  impersonal  and  vague  form 
of  the  earliest  Buddhistic  conception  of  Karma,  or  as  God,  the 
Absolute  Ethical  Spirit,  perfectly  good,  just,  and  holy ;  then 
all  morality — and  not  some  particular  species  of  conduct 
merely — comes  to  be  viewed  as  obedience  to  the  Divine  will. 
The  height  of  the  ethico-religious  consciousness  is  reached 
when  wrong-doing  in  general  is  regarded  as  a  breach  of  the 
right  relations  between  man  and  God;  and  when  right-doing 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  451 

is  regarded  as  the  acceptable  service  of  God,  with  fidelity  and 
ethical  love  as  its  supreme  motive.  Thus  there  comes  about 
such  a  fusion  of  the  springs  of  morality  and  religion,  that  the 
whole  life  of  conduct  flows  forth,  strong,  pure,  and  spontane- 
ous, as  from  one  divinely  inexhaustible  source.  With  religion 
God  is  now  conceived  of,  and  thought  about,  as  an  essentially 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  The  world  then  becomes  regarded  as 
a  theatre  for  the  manifestation  of  the  divine  purposes  toward 
God's  spiritual  creation. 

Most  fundamental  and  important  of  all  the  forms  of  man's 
religious  experience  is  the  attitude  which  the  human  Self,  as 
self-determining,  assumes  to  the  invisible  and  super-human 
Other  Self;  or  to  say  the  same  thing  in  more  familiar  terms, 
the  attitude  of  man's  will  toward  the  Object  of  his  religious 
faith.  The  conditions  and  limitations  of  "  moral  freedom " 
in  the  religious  sphere  do  not,  indeed,  differ  essentially  from 
those  which  have  already  been  pointed  out  (p.  303f.)  as  belong- 
ing to  the  entire  life  of  man  in  his  present  physical  and  social 
development.  Freedom  such  as  this  is  no  attribute  to  be 
located  definitively  and  exclusively  in  some  one  so-called 
faculty  of  Will.  It  is  the  achievement  of  the  active,  self- 
determining  Self,  involving  the  motives  which  originate  in 
all  its  higher  sentiments  and  aspirations,  as  well  as  in  its  lower 
impulses;  and  engaging  all  the  various  forms  of  its  mental 
functioning.  Were  man  not  active  in  thinking,  imagining, 
and  feeling,  he  would  not  be  free;  but  then  neither  would  he 
be  religious.  Especially  is  the  fact  to  be  insisted  upon  in  this 
connection  that  moral  freedom  is  no  ready-made  attribute, 
or  absolute  and  unconditional  endowment  of  human  nature. 
It  is  a  matter  of  indefinite  variety  of  degrees ;  and  it  is  always 
a  subject  of  development.  It  is,  however,  in  the  adjusting  of 
himself,  by  a  more  or  less  deliberate  choice,  to  the  Object  of 
religious  belief  that  man's  freedom  makes  the  culminating 
manifestation  of  its  essential  excellence  and  likeness  to  this 
Object.     In  its  highest  form,  such  an  act  is  properly  to  be 


453  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

described  as  a  voluntary  adjustment  of  the  finite  spirit  to  that 
Infinite  Spirit,  whom   faith  calls  God. 

The  importance  of  the  relation  which  the  development  of 
human  freedom  in  the  religious  sphere  sustains  to  the  value- 
judgments  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  On  the  one  hand,  in 
the  formation  of  these  value-judgments  man  exercises  his  voli- 
tion by  deciding  what  shall  have  value,  as  judged  to  be  of 
superior  or  supreme  worth.  For  the  judgment  itself  is  not 
by  any  means  a  passive  affair ;  it  is,  the  rather,  itself  an  activity 
involving  the  self-determining  mind — a  voluntary  commit- 
ment of  the  Self  to  a  mental  attitude  of  preference.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  the  character  of  the  value-judgment  thus  pre- 
ferred, itself  reacts  to  assist  or  to  hinder  the  development  of  a 
higher  condition  of  freedom.  Choices  of  the  more  spiritual 
values,  when  often  repeated  in  the  religious  consciousness,  set 
the  will  free  from  the  influence  of  the  morally  inferior  im- 
pressions and  solicitations.  In  the  lower  stages  of  man's  re- 
ligious life  we  note  this  competition  between  different  kinds  of 
good ; — between  the  sensuous  valuables  to  which  the  will  is 
compelled  by  appetite,  passion  and  desire,  and  the  spiritual 
values  which  religion,  in  its  higher  stages  of  the  activity  of 
intellect  and  imagination,  presents  as  rivals  to  these  sensuous 
impressions.  And  the  man  is  called  to  choose  between  the  two. 
This  choice  it  is  which  seems  to  religion  as  a  choice  between 
the  flesh  and  the  spirit ;  or  between  the  world  and  God ;  or 
between  human  favor  and  the  divine  approval;  or,  finally, 
between  a  widening  separation  from  the  source  of  all  spiritual 
life  and  its  voluntary  acceptance  as  the  indwelling  and  wel- 
comed source  of  the  true  and  highest  life. 

In  this  way  the  exercise  of  moral  freedom  in  the  life  of 
religion  emphasizes  the  self-determining  attitude  of  the  human 
being  toward  the  Divine  Being.  And  the  kind  of  self-control 
which  the  highest  development  of  religion  demands  is  the 
ability  of  the  human  will  to  respond  to  the  Divine  Will. 
Where  this  Being  is  regarded  only  as  a  motley  and  conflicting 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  453 

host  of  invisible  superhuman  powers,  there  is,  of  course,  no 
freedom  to  worship  a  God  who  is  conceived  of  as  perfect  Eth- 
ical Spirit  and  to  serve  his  cause  with  fidelity  and  ethical  love. 
Where  the  conception  of  the  Object  of  religious  faith  is  thus 
split  up,  as  it  were,  and  involves  so  heterogeneous  and  contend- 
ing elements,  the  allegiance  of  head  and  heart  and  life  cannot 
freely  go  forth  toward  this  object.  The  possibility  of  the  high- 
est kind  of  freedom  in  religion  depends,  then,  upon  the  pos- 
sibility of  attaining  and  justifying  a  truly  spiritual  Ideal 
which  shall  harmonize  all  the  interests  of  both  the  intellect 
and  the  sesthetical  and  ethical  sentiments.  But  this  possi- 
bility itself  can  be  effectively  realized  only  in  the  form  of  a 
choice.  Only  that  form  of  religious  belief,  therefore,  whose 
conception  of  God  is  that  of  an  Ideal  which  satisfies  the  reli- 
gious needs,  and  which  calls  forth  and  fixes  upon  itself  the 
most  profound  and  influential  choices  of  the  human  soul,  can 
fully  develope  the  potentiality  of  freedom  that  lies  hidden  in 
the  soul's  depths. 

There  are  two  extreme  views  which  stand  equally  opposed 
to  the  true  view  of  the  relation  in  which  the  freedom  of  man 
stands  to  the  genesis  and  development  of  his  religious  experi- 
ence. One  of  them  exaggerates  the  independence  and  creative 
activity  of  the  finite  will.  The  practical  conclusion  may  then 
follow  that  man  has  no  need  of  divine  help,  and  even  that  "  all 
religious  ideals  and  systems  are  childish  illusion,  utterly  in- 
compatible with  right  reason  and  rational  ethics."  On  the  con- 
trary, the  other  extreme  view  so  relates  the  finite  will  to 
the  Absolute  Will,  the  human  being  to  the  Divine  Being,  that 
the  former  realizes  the  good  of  religion  only  by  being  merged 
and  utterly  lost  in  the  latter.  Man  is  then  no  longer  a  rational 
and  free  Self  when  he  attains  the  end  of  religion;  man  is  swal- 
lowed up  in  God.  The  problem  of  the  relation  of  man's  na- 
ture, as  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  to  the  In- 
finite Spirit  whom  religion  believes  to  be  manifested  in  that 
Nature  whoso  child   man  surely  is,  affords,  indeed,  the  most 


454  KNOWLEDGJi,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

insolvable  of  all  puzzles  to  the  philosophy  of  religion.  But  it 
is  certain  that  neither  of  these  extreme  views  opens  up  the  pros- 
pect of  its  solution  in  a  way  to  correspond  with  the  facts,  or 
to  answer  the  demand  for  satisfaction  of  the  religious  experi- 
ence and  the  religious  evolution  of  the  race. 

It  has  been  customary  to  discredit  the  conclusions,  both 
those  more  naive  and  those  more  elaborate  and  reflective,  of 
the  religious  experience,  by  pointing  out  that  it  all  ends  in 
"a  man-made  God."  This  impeachment  must  certainly  be 
allowed  to  be  true.  But  if  there  has  been  any  general  conclu- 
sion established  by  the  entire  course  of  our  reflective  thinking, 
it  is  this :  the  world  as  man  knows  it  is,  of  necessity,  in  the 
same  meaning  of  the  term,  "  a  man-made  world."  But  then 
this  same  world  made  man  to  know  itself  in  this  way;  how  else 
could  a  "  world-made  man  "  know  the  world  than  as  a  "  man- 
made  world "  ?  The  origin  and  development  of  all  the  re- 
ligions of  the  human  race  is  characterized  by  this  confidence 
that  the  invisible  spirits  which  are  objects  of  faith,  although 
superhuman,  are  rightly  to  be  conceived  of  as  bearing  the  image 
of  the  human.  So  then,  religious  philosophy,  when  complained 
of  for  making  God  in  the  image  of  man,  feels  itself  justified 
in  replying  that,  in  truth,  this  is  because  man  has  been  made 
by  God  in  the  image  of  God.  Here  is  witliout  doubt,  for  both 
science  and  religion,  a  circle  in  the  argument  from  which 
there  is  no  possible  escape.  The  trustworthiness  of  this  cir- 
cular argument,  which  begins  with  the  faith  of  reason  in  itself 
and  ends  with  an  ever-increasing,  because  an  increasingly 
rational  faith,  is  the  path  which  man  is  compelled  to  take 
in  all  his  progress  toward  the  superior  heights  of  knowledge. 
This  making  of  man  in  the  divine  image  is  a  development,  a 
process  in  history.  Man  makes  God  in  man's  image;  because 
God  has  made  man  in  the  divine  image.  Man,  as  he  becomes 
more  fully  man,  more  of  a  rational  and  free  personality,  more 
worthily  and  truly  conceives  of  God;  but  this  is  because  God 
is  himself  making  man  more  and  more  like  God. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF   RELIGION  455 

A  detailed  study  of  the  ways  iu  which  this  process  of  the 
religious  development  of  the  race  is  going  on  would  require 
a  careful  survey  of  all  human  history.  For  history  shows  that 
this  development  has  always  been  most  intimately  related  with 
every  other  form  of  man's  development.  Man's  economic,  in- 
dustrial, political,  scientific,  moral,  and  artistic,  progress  has 
everywhere  and  at  all  times  been  interdependently  related  to 
his  religious  progress.  Nor  have  there  been  lacking  numerous 
important  interactions  between  religious  beliefs  and  practices 
and  the  physical  environment.  Especially  has  philosophy,  or 
the  products  of  reflective  thinking,  most  powerfully  affected 
the  forms  given  to  the  Object  of  religious  faith;  and  this 
result  has  very  naturally  been  most  marked  in  the  higher  and 
purer  forms  of  this  faith.  The  more  profoundly  man  thinks, 
and  the  nobler  his  sentiments,  the  more  reasonable  and  in- 
spiring must  be  the  conception  to  which  this  Object  corre- 
sponds. 

We  see,  then,  that  religion  is  no  adventitious  and  insignifi- 
cant affair  in  the  life  and  the  development,  of  either  the  in- 
dividual or  the  race.  It  springs  perennially  from  the  entire 
nature  of  the  man.  It  is  ministered  to  by  the  entire  Nature 
which  constitutes  his  environment.  In  its  historical  evolution, 
it  is  intimately  related  to  every  other  human  interest;  and  it 
furnishes  powerful  reactions  upon  them  all. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON 

The  varied  conceptions  of  those  invisible  superhuman  spirits 
which  have  been  at  different  times  the  objects  of  men's  re- 
ligious faith  may  be  subjected  to  historical  examination.  The 
developments  which  these  conceptions  have  undergone,  and 
the  form  which  the  one  conception  has  taken  that  represents 
the  highest  achievement  of  reflective  thinking  upon  the  basis 
of  religious  experience,  may  be  studied  in  the  same  way.  This 
historical  research  is  the  work  of  comparative  religion.  It 
results  in  showing  how  two  groups  of  factors  have  been  chiefly 
influential  in  bringing  al)Out  the  present  state  of  religion  in 
the  world.  There  are,  first,  the  factors  which  have  made  for 
the  unifying  of  the  Object  of  religious  faith,  as  the  essential 
unity  of  the  World,  when  viewed  both  from  the  scientific  and 
from  the  social  points  of  standing,  has  become  better  estab- 
lished. Some  kind  of  a  Unitary  Being  must,  then,  be  substi- 
tuted for  the  many  invisible,  superhuman  beings  believed  in 
by  savage  or  primitive  man.  One  Alone  God  displaces  in  the 
faith  of  mankind,  the  gods  many  and  of  varied,  if  not  con- 
flicting interests.  And,  second,  the  changing  conceptions  of 
the  nature  and  laws  of  the  development  of  personal  life  have 
most  profoundly  influenced  the  very  structure  of  the  Object 
whom  religion  believes  in  and  worships.  In  the  higher  forms 
of  constructive  religious  thinking, — especially  in  the  theology 
of  modern  Christianity, — the  Object  of  religious  faith  is  God 
as  personal  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

The  data  of  man's  religious  consciousness,  when  presented 
in  their  sources  by  comparative  psychology  and  in  their  devel- 
opment by  comparative  history,  propose  to  philosophy  its  most 

456 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      457 

profoundly  difficult  and  practically  important  problems.  These 
are  the  problems  of  God  as  personal  and  ethically  perfect 
Spirit;  and  the  problem  of  the  relations  in  which  man,  as  per- 
sonal and  finite  and  ethically  imperfect  spirit,  stands  to  God. 
Thrown  into  the  form  of  questions,  these  problems  may  be  stated 
somewhat  as  follows:  How  shall  the  Being  of  the  World  be  so 
conceived  of,  as  at  the  same  time  to  comply  with  all  that  is 
known  by  the  particular  sciences,  physical  and  psychological  or 
moral,  and  also  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  religious  experience? 
And  again,  how  shall  the  relations  of  man,  both  individual  and 
social,  to  this  Being  of  the  World  be  so  conceived  of  as  to 
conserve  and  secure,  in  accordance  with  the  truths  of  fact, 
man's  own  social  integrity  and  practical  interests?  These 
two  problems  are  interdependently  related.  The  attempt  at  a 
brief  and  confessedly  fragmentary  but  critical  discussion  of 
them  will  be  made  in  the  following  two  chapters. 

Thus  far  a  number  of  vague  and  somewhat  uncouth  terms 
have  been  employed  to  embody  for  the  time  being  the  factors 
which  have  been  selected  in  order  to  form  the  most  compre- 
hensive and  reasonable  conception  of  that  Eeality  which  is 
manifested  in  all  the  phenomena  of  nature  and  of  human  life. 
Among  such  terms  have  been  "  The  Being  of  the  World,"  "  The 
World-Ground,"  or  "  Nature  in  the  large,"  "  The  Universe," 
etc.  As  long  as  these  metaphysical  terms  served  only  the  in- 
terests of  a  generalization  made  for,  and  confined  to,  the 
purposes  of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences,  the  attitude  of 
mind  and  life  assumed  toward  them  appeared  to  be  of  little 
practical  importance.  Indifferentism  in  the  form  of  Syncre- 
tism, Scepticism,  and  Agnosticism,  in  the  metaphysical  sphere 
make  comparatively  little  practical  difference  with  the  growth 
and  usefulness  for  human  betterment  of  these  sciences.  But 
the  moment  the  border  is  crossed  into  the  philosophy  of  the 
ideal,  into  the  metaphysics  of  values,  the  case  remains  by  no 
means  the  same.  Whether  morality,  art,  and  religion,  are  really 
grounded  in,  and  of  interest  to,  the  Being  of  the  World,  makes 


458  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

a  great  deal  of  difi'erence  with  man's  interest  in  morality,  art, 
and  religion;  and  as  well,  with  his  practice  in  all  these  fields 
of  aspiration  and  endeavor.  Especially  is  this  true  of  religion. 
For  the  relation  which  is  sustained  by  the  way  in  which  the 
race  conceives  of  God  to  the  entire  development  of  the  race, 
and  especially  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  proposed  to  phi- 
losophy by  the  religious  experience  of  the  race,  is  an  indissoluble 
and  essentially  unchanging  relation.  Sincere  and  thorough  in- 
differentism,  or  scepticism,  or  agnosticism  on  the  part  of  men 
generally, — were  either  of  these  possible — would  at  once  effect 
the  negation  of  the  religious  ideal;  it  would  in  time  destroy 
the  religious  experience  of  mankind. 

It  is  of  primary  importance  in  subjecting  the  postulate  of 
religious  faith  to  a  critical  examination,  that  there  should  be 
some  agreement  as  to  the  kind  of  evidence  which  this  postulate 
can  rightfully  be  expected  to  offer.  On  this  subject  there  are 
two  views  standing  at  opposite  extremes,  both  of  which  must 
be  rejected.  The  claim  of  the  individual  religious  devotee  to 
have  an  indubitable  "  vision  of  God " — whether  more  purely 
subjective  or  seemingly  objective,  and  whether  psychology  pro- 
nounces the  experience  to  be  only  half-illusion,  or  pure  hallu- 
cination— cannot  be  offered  to  reflective  thinking  as  conclusive 
evidence  for  the  conception  which  religion  holds  as  to  the  Be- 
ing of  the  World.  In  its  more  rational  form  the  claim  to 
have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  God  becomes  the  theory  affirm- 
ing what  is  known  as  a  "  God-consciousness  "  in  all  men.  If 
by  this  it  is  meant  that  man  has  the  power  to  make  an  imme- 
diate seizure,  so  to  say,  of  the  Object  of  religious  faith,  as  we 
envisage  the  Self  in  self-consciousness  or  the  something  not- 
self  in  sense-perception,  then  the  claim  is  psychologically  in- 
defensible. There  is  important  truth,  however,  touching  the 
origin  and  nature  of  the  fundamental  conception  of  all  religion, 
in  the  evidence  which  is  customarily  offered  by  the  advo- 
cates of  this  view.  What  we  do  really  find  in  the  religious 
consciousness  of  the  race  is   a   spontaneous  interpretation  of 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      459 

experience  both  internal  and  external,  both  of  things  and  of 
selves,  as  due  to  other  spiritual  existences; — ^with  its  accom- 
paniment of  confidence  in  the  ontological  value  of  the  inter- 
pretation. This  process  is  indeed  the  ever-developing  source 
of  the  knowledge  of  God. 

"  By  an  easy  and  almost  inevitable  transition  the  claim  to 
have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  reality  and  attributes  of 
Divine  Being  passes  over  into  the  claim  to  have  demonstrative, 
or  what  Kant  called  apodeictic,  proof  on  these  matters.  It 
has  for  centuries  been  the  ideal  of  philosophy  and  theology, 
by  a  process  of  reasoning  which  shall  start  from  an  aljsolutely 
indisputable  major  premise,  and  which  shall  proceed  by 
equally  indisputable  steps,  to  establish  deductively  the  con- 
clusion that  God  is,  and — at  least  in  some  degree,  as  to  wliat 
God  is.  The  author  of  the  critical  philosophy,  on  the  con- 
trary, supposed  himself  to  have  demonstrated  once  for  all  the 
illogical  character  of  all  the  existing  proofs  of  the  reality  of 
God;  and  to  have  shown  in  an  a  priori  way  that  the  very 
nature  of  man's  cognitive  faculty  makes  any  real  knowledge 
of  God  impossible.  But  like  other  demonstrations  which  were 
to  settle  for  all  time  the  limits  of  metaphysics  as  ontology, 
this  one  has  been  quite  persistently  disputed  both  by  those 
who  believe — as  Kant  himself  did — in  God,  and  also  by  those 
who  are  either  agnostic  or  sceptical  toward  the  conception.^' 

Between  the  extreme  of  confidence  in  either  an  immediate 
intuition  or  an  unanswerable  demonstration  of  the  reality  of 
the  Object  of  religious  faith  and  the  extreme  of  agnosticism  or 
despair,  the  grounds  of  this  faith  lie  hidden  or  exposed  in  the 
experience  of  the  race.  The  one  inexhaustible  source  of  evi- 
dences for  the  true  conception  of  God  is  the  experience  of  the 
race.  But  this  experience  must  be  considered  in  its  totality 
and  as  subject  to  development.  We  may  say  with  Schultz 
then :  "  To  be  certain  of  the  existence  of  God  means,  funda- 
mentally considered,  to  recognize  as  necessary  the  religious 
view  of  the  World."    This  belief  has  been  in  the  world  of  men 


460  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

for  untold  centuries;  it  has  already  undergone  a  significant 
process  of  development.  We  are,  therefore,  not  seeking  a  new 
vision  or  an  hitherto  undiscovered  demonstration  of  the  order 
expected  from  the  genius  in  so-called  pure  mathematics;  we 
are,  the  rather,  trying  to  give  a  rational  interpretation  to  the 
thouglits  and  beliefs  of  the  ages,  in  the  form  of  a  Postulate 
touching  the  Being  of  the  World.  Or  in  other  words,  we  are 
raising  in  a  critical  but  sympathetic  way  the  inquiry  whether 
the  World-Ground  may  reasonaWy  he  conceived  of  as  personal, 
and  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

In  answering  this  inquiry  it  is  by  no  means  necessary  to 
take  an  entirely  new  start.  For,  indeed,  all  our  previous  in- 
vestigations have  furnished  more  or  less  of  material  contribu- 
tary  to  the  desired  answer.  It  will  therefore  facilitate  fur- 
ther inquiry  if  we  summarize  briefly  some  of  the  more  im- 
portant points  derived  from  them  all.  The  conclusion  from 
our  attempt  at  a  philosophical  theory  of  knowledge  need  not 
l)e  referred  to  again  in  this  connection;  since  it  has  reference 
to  all  degrees  and  kinds  of  knowledge,  quite  irrespective  of 
llie  nature  of  the  subjects  about  which  man  vaguely  aspires  or 
definitely  attempts  to  know.  Here,  science  is  as  completely 
l>ound  by  limitations   as  is  religious  faith, 

Eecognizing  the  limitations,  and  at  the  same  time  holding 
to  the  faith  of  reason  in  itself  so  long  as  it  is  a  reasonable 
faith,  the  following  inferences  of  a  general  character  may  now 
be  taken  over  into  the  field  of  religion.  First:  All  the  par- 
ticular sciences,  in  their  dealing  with  the  specific  kinds  and 
relations  of  real  objects,  find  themselves  compelled  to  assume 
a  certain  inherent  nature  as  belonging  to  these  objects,  and 
to  the  elements  of  which  they  are  composed.  On  further  ex- 
amination, this  nature  appears  to  stand  for  a  characteristic 
group  of  habitual  actions  or  tendencies  under  the  control  of 
ideas.  But  to  admit  this  is  virtually  to  say  that  all  things, 
and  all  elements  of  things,  are  known  to  science,  and  only 
known,  when  they  are  conceived  of  as  more   or  less  self-like. 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      4(il 

It  may  be  a  startling,  but  it  is  a  justifiable,  way  of  stating 
the  metaphysical  assumption  which  underlies  all  human  knowl- 
edge of  physical  objects  to  say  that,  in  order  to  be  known  by 
the  person,  man,  things  must  be  themselves,  in  reality,  pos- 
sessed of  certain  personal  attributes.  Or,  in  a  yet  more  gen- 
eral way:  Tlie  laws  and  forms  and  tendencies,  which  con- 
trol the  forces  of  action  and  reaction,  are  strictly  analogous 
to  ideas  regulating  a  so-called  will.  And  while  the  phenom- 
ena are  manifestations,  or  appearances  (as,  indeed,  the  very 
word  signifies)  ;  tlie  will  and  the  ideas  manifested  are  invis- 
ible, and  of  a  (/w^z^i-spiritual  quality. 

But,  second :  As  the  intricate  and  complex  phenomena  are 
more  and  better  comprehended  and  systematized  by  the  growth 
of  knowledge,  especially  in  terms  of  modern  science,  the  tend- 
ency becomes  stronger  and  more  compelling  to  regard  all  the 
seemingly  separate  kinds  of  force  as  variations,  or  different 
forms,  of  one  Force;  and,  in  like  manner,  to  consider  all  the 
forms,  and  specific  varieties,  and  varying  relations,  and  inter- 
dependent developments,  as  constituting  one  System, — a  Na- 
ture, or  Universe,  that  is  somehow  one  day  to  be  understood 
as  a  Unitary  Being,  in  conformity  to  some  supreme  idea,  or 
Ideal.  That  science  is  far  indeed  from  knowing  the  world 
perfectly  in  this  way,  and  further  still  from  comprehending 
the  Idea  which  the  world's  evolution  is  realizing,  must,  of 
course,  be  admitted  without  question.  Science  is,  in  truth,  far 
enough  from  knowing  any  simplest,  and  seemingly  most  value- 
less Thing,  or  the  many  ideas  which  the  thing  may  be  follow- 
ing and  expressing,  in  any  complete  way.  There  is  that 
which  baffles  research,  in  the  clod  as  well  as  in  the  star,  in 
the  single  living  cell  as  well  as  in  the  spirit  of  the  artistic 
or  religious  genius.  In  spite  of  this,  however,  we  must  do 
the  best  we  can ;  and  to  all  appearances,  we  are  making  some 
substantial  gains  in  our  knowldge  of  what  sort  of  a  One  World 
this  is,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  human  race  is  evolving.  But 
the  one   Force  which  science  desires  to  substitute  for  many 


462  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

varied  and  conflicting  forces,  and  the  Unitary  Being,  with  its 
onward  march  toward  tlie  completer  realization  of  some  Ideal, 
serve  to  bring  together  all  things,  and  all  their  transactions, 
under  a  conception  yet  more  distinctly  that  of  an  invisible 
and  (/ufl.si-spiritvial  reality.  The  Reality,  the  Being  of  the 
World,  to  the  faith  in  which  science  invites  us,  is  essentially 
non-sensuous,  intellectual,  and  Self-like,  in  a  far  grander  way 
than  are  the  individual  self-like  things  composing  the  physical 
system. 

Third :  It  is  only,  however,  when  man  knows  himself  that 
he  gets  the  more  imperative  impulse,  and  the  fuller  insight, 
toward  the  knowledge  of  those  characteristics  which  are  essen- 
tial to  the  attainment  of  reality  in  its  realest  and  supremely 
valuable  form.  His  own  Self,  man  may  come  to  apprehend, 
in  a  more  immediate  and  certain  way,  as  not  simply  self-like 
when  known  by  another,  but  as  a  very  true  and  real  Self. 
The  reality  of  such  a  self-hood  is  constituted  by  the  activities 
of  the  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  the  spirit 
that  is  in  man.  Here  again, — and  in  some  respects,  especially 
here,- — there  are  many  limitations  to  be  acknowledged;  there 
is  much  extension  and  correction  of  hypotheses  to  be  desired; 
there  are  many  puzzling  problems  to  be  solved,  and  many  in- 
vincible mysteries  to  be  confessed.  And  always  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  this  kind  of  self-realization  is  a  matter  of  de- 
grees, and  a  subject  of  development.  At  tlie  same  time,  its 
reality  is  not  to  be  questioned ;  it  is  no  subject  for  scepticism 
or  agnosticism ;  and  its  value  cannot  be  made  lower  than  that 
which  belongs  to  the  standard  by  which  all  other  values  are 
tested  and,  as  values,  estimated   and  explained. 

Such  a  world  as  this,  then, — a  system  of  self-like  things, 
environing  and  partially  but  not  wholly,  controlling  a  race  of 
beings  that  have  somehow  developed  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  minds — is  The  World  as  man  knows  the  world 
really  to  be.  All  its  phenomena  are  necessarily  akin  to  him- 
self; for  they  are  all  manifestations  of  an  invisible,  and  spir- 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      103 

itual  Eeality,  the  highest  approach  to  whose  characteristics 
he  recognizes  as  found  in  the  reality  he  knows  himself  to  be. 
Thus  far  the  physical  and  psychological  sciences  seem  com- 
pelled to  go  toward  the  personification  of  the  World-Ground, 
while  maintaining  their  own  peculiar  points  of  view. 

We  cannot,  however,  rest  argument  here  if  we  are  to  afford 
full  satisfaction  to  human  interests,  both  intellectual  and  prac- 
tical, in  our  conception  of  the  so-called  World-Ground,  as  the 
Eeality  whose  nature  all  the  phenomena  are  manifesting  in 
an  increasing  way.  We  must,  the  rather,  fourth,  receive  to 
our  confidence  for  all  which  they  are  worth,  the  testimony 
of  human  ideals.  Tliat  these  ideals,  both  the  moral  and  the 
artistic,  have  powerfully  influenced  the  development  of  the 
race  in  history,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  But  this  influence 
has  been  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  men  have  believed  their 
ideals  to  have  verity;  and  also  due  to  the  authority  w^hich  is  thus 
imparted  to  ideal  conceptions  of  the  real  Being  of  the  World. 
Neither  the  obligations  of  duty,  nor  the  allurements  of  beauty, 
have  ever  been  believed  to  be  wholly  subjective.  And  no  theory 
of  evolution  has  ever  explained,  or  ever  can  explain,  how  the 
moral  can  arise  out  of  a  Nature  that  is  wholly  non-moral;  or 
how  the  sesthetical  can  emerge  from  a  material  Universe  that 
has  itself  no  appreciation  of  beauty.  It  is  true,  as  has  been 
admitted  in  treating  of  the  philosophy  of  morals  and  the 
philosophy  of  the  beautiful,  that  variations  and  uncertainties 
cloud  human  experience  with  both  these  classes  of  the  ideal ; 
and  that  the  conceptions  which  come  to  rule  for  the  time  being 
in  both,  are  subject  to  a  continued  process  of  development. 
It  is  even  more  profoundly  true  that  the  ideals,  if  any,  which 
the  Being  of  the  World  is  following  in  its  moral  and  asthetical 
education  of  the  race  (if  one  may  be  allowed  to  speak  in  this 
way)  stiU  remain — and  probably,  always  will  remain — much 
shrouded  in  impenetrable  mystery.  None  the  less,  however, 
the  race,  and  most  firmly  the  best  of  the  race,  maintains  its 
confidence  in  the   faith  that  its   own  ethical  and  aesthetical 


4G4  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ideals  have  their  Ground  in  Eeality.  But  to  maintain  this 
confidence  is  to  give  to  Eeality  a  more  distinctly  personal  char- 
acter. It  is  to  construct  a  conception  of  the  World-Ground,  on 
the  basis  of  the  belief  that  It  manifests  itself  to  us,  as  a 
spirit  in  us  and  akin  to  what  is  best  and  highest  of  our  own. 

Now  religion,  as  an  individual  and  practical  belief,  fastens 
upon  all  these  indications  which  point  out  the  real  nature  of 
the  world ;  and  to  satisfy  its  demands,  it  proceeds  to  all  the 
lengths  necessary  in  the  process  of  personification.  In  its 
crude,  unscientific,  and  unphilosophical  form,  and  with  a 
spirit  divided  in  its  impulses  and  attractions  between  the  mor- 
ally and  ffisthetically  good  and  the  morally  and  it!sthetically 
evil,  it  creates  many  invisible  and  superhuman  spirits,  of  varied 
and  conflicting  kinds.  But  the  philosophy  of  religion  aims, 
here  as  everywhere,  at  unity  and  harmony.  It  asks :  "  May  we 
not,  in  accordance  with  all  we  know  of  the  phenomena,  con- 
ceive of  the  World-Ground  as  Absolute  Person;  may  we  not 
even  conceive  of  the  World-Ground  as  the  perfection  of  moral 
and  aesthetical  Personal  Life?" 

On  the  very  threshold  of  an  attempt  to  examine  this  prob- 
lem the  inquirer  is  met  by  certain  a  priori  denials  of  the 
possibility  of  uniting  the  proposed  terms  in  any  one  concep- 
tion. Personality  and  absoluteness,  or  infinity,  are  promptly 
alleged  to  be  incompatible  terms.  Equally  incompatible  are, 
it  is  said,  all"  properly  personal  characterizations — such  as 
self-consciousness,  reason,  and  all  moral  attributes — with  the 
al)soluteness  of  the  World-Ground.  The  harsher  contradic- 
tions and  graver  diflBculties  which  have  been  introduced  into 
the  conception  of  God  as  Infinite  and  Absolute  Person  are, 
at  least  in  part  removed,  when  the  following  three  considera- 
tions are  borne  in  mind. 

"And,  first:  To  identify  the  Infinite  or  the  Absolute  with 
the  unknowable  or  the  unrelated  is  a])surd.  To  know  is  to 
relate,  and  all  knowing  is,  in  respect  of  one  group  of  its  most 
essential   elements  or   factors,   relating  activity.     Thinking  is 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON       1G5 

relating,  and  although  thinking  is  not  the  whole  of  knowing, 
knowledge  and  growth  of  knowledge  are  impossihle  without 
thought.  Moreover,  all  human  knowing  is  finite;  man's  knowl- 
edge of  the  infinite  and  absolute  is  a  very  finite  and  relative 
kind  of  knowledge.  But  to  speak  of  this  knowledge  as  im- 
possible, because  the  knowing  mind  is  finite;  or  of  absolute 
knowledge  as  a  contradiction  in  terms,  because  knowledge  is, 
essentially  considered,  relating; — this  is  so  to  mistake  the  very 
nature  of  mental  life  as  to  render  the  objection  nugatory  and 
ridiculous.  This  strange  psychological  fallacy,  although  it 
so  frequently  entraps  writers  to  whom  credit  must  be  given 
for  ordinary  acquaintance  with  mental  phenomena,  scarcely 
deserves  other  treatment  than  a  reference  to  the  most  ele- 
mentary psychological  principles.  Man's  cognitive  capacity  is 
not  to  be  compared  with  the  capacity  of  some  material  vessel; 
the  content  of  the  mind  is  not  to  be  likened  to  the  contents  of 
a  wooden  measure."  As  to  The  Infinite,  the  Unknowable,  or 
The  Absolute,  the  Unrelated,  we  are  indeed  warranted  in 
affirming :  "  Such  a  metaphysical  idol  we  can  never,  of  course, 
know,  for  it  is  cunningly  devised  after  the  pattern  of  what 
knowledge  is  not"   (Schurman,  Belief  in  God,  p.  117). 

"  But,  secondly,  the  words  infinite  and  absolute  as  applied  to 
any  reality  cannot  be  used  wdth  a  negative  significance  merely. 
Absolutely  negative  conceptions  are  not  conceptions  at  all. 
Thinking  and  imagining  cannot  be  wholly  negative  perform- 
ances. Words  that  have  no  positive  meaning  are  no  true 
words;  they  are  not  in  any  respect  signs  or  symbols  of  mental 
acts.  Pre-eminently  true  is  all  this  of  an  idea  so  infinitely 
rich  in  content  as  that  arrived  at  by  thought,  when,  reflecting 
upon  the  significance  for  Eeality  of  man's  total  experience,  it 
frames  the  ultimate  explanation  of  it  all  in  terms  of  infinite 
and  absolute  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind.  In 
arguing  about  the  possibility  of  an  Infinite  Personality  this 
rule,  which  forbids  laying  all  the  emphasis  on  the  negation, 
must  always  be  rigidly  observed.     Personal  qualifications  do 


46G  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

not  necessarily  lose  their  characteristic  personal  qualit}^  when 
it  is  affirmed  that  certain  particular  limitations,  under  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  experience  them,  must  he  thought  of  as 
removed.  No  removal  of  the  limit  destroys,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  the  essential  nature  of  the  qualification  itself." 

Yet,  again, — to  express  essentially  the  same  cautionary 
truth  in  another  way — the  words  infinite  and  absolute  as  ap- 
plied to  any  subject  of  human  thinking,  must  always  be  taken 
with  an  adjectival  signification;  they  are  predicates  defining 
the  character,  as  respects  its  limits,  of  some  positive  factors  of 
a  given  conception.  The  Infinite,  The  Absolute, — these  and 
all  similar  phrases,  when  left  wholly  undefined — are  barren 
abstractions;  they  are,  too  often,  only  meaningless  sound.  The 
negative  and  sceptical  conclusions,  which  it  is  attempted  to 
embody  in  this  way,  are  controverted  by  all  the  tendencies  of 
the  modern  sciences — physical  as  well  as  mental.  All  these 
sciences,  in  their  most  comprehensive  conclusions  and  highest 
speculative  flights,  point  toward  the  conception  of  a  Unity 
of  Eeality,  a  Subject  (or  Trdger)  for  the  phenomena.  The 
Oneness  of  all  beings  that  are  real,  we  have  called  the  Being 
of  the  World,  or  the  World-Ground.  But,  as  has  already  been 
seen,  we  cannot  rest  in  this  abstraction.  What  really  is  this 
Being  which  has  the  manifold  qualities  and  performs  the 
varied  operations?  This  Subject  of  all  the  predicates,  we  de- 
sire more  positively  to  know — meantime  we  call  it  absolute 
because,  itself  unconditioned.  It  is  the  Ground  of  all  conditions. 
We  call  it  infinite  because,  itself  unlimited  from  without,  or 
Self-limited,  It  sets  the  limits  for  all  finite  and  dependent 
existences. 

In  speaking,  then,  of  God  as  infinite  and  absolute  person, 
or  Self,  it  is  not  meant  simply  to  deny  that  the  limitations 
which  belong  to  all  finite  and  dependent  things  and  selves 
apply  to  him ;  it  is  also  meant  positively  to  affirm  the  confi- 
dence that  certain  predicates  and  attributes  of  Personal  Life 
reach  their  perfection,  and  are  harmoniously   united,   in  the 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      467 

self-conscious  and  rational  Divine  Will.  It  follows  from  this 
that  the  conceptions  of  infinity  and  absoluteness  apply  to  the 
difl^erent  predicates  and  attributes  of  a  person,  in  quite  differ- 
ent ways.  Thus  a  personal  God  can  be  spoken  of  as  infinite, 
in  any  precise  meaning  of  the  term,  only  as  respects  those 
aspects  or  activities  of  personal  life  to  which  conceptions  of 
quantity  and  measure  can  be  intelligibly  applied.  His  in- 
finiteness  of  power,  for  example,  becomes  his  omnipotence;  his 
infiniteness  of  knowledge  his  omniscience;  his  complete  free- 
dom from  control  by  the  limiting  conditions  of  forces  that  act 
in  space  becomes  his  omnipresence,  etc.  To  such  moral  at- 
tributes, however,  as  wisdom,  justice,  goodness,  and  ethical 
love,  the  negating  aspect  of  the  conception  of  infinity  does  not 
apply,  except  in  a  figurative  way  which  by  being  mistaken, 
may  become  misleading.  It  is  at  once  more  appropriate,  in- 
telligible, and  safe,  to  speak  of  the  perfection  of  God  as  re- 
spects these  moral  attributes.  For  the  very  conception  of 
measure  and  quantity,  strictly  understood,  has  nothing  to  do 
with  moral  dispositions  or  attributes,  as  such,  but  only  with 
the  corresponding  number  of  objects  toward  which  these  activi- 
ties are  exercised.  An  infinitely  wise  person,  for  example,  is 
one  whose  wisdom  is  perfect  in  all  relations  with  all  other 
beings;  but  this  perfection  of  wdsdom  cannot  be  exercised 
unless  the  same  person  is  omniscient,  omnipotent,  and  per- 
fectly good. 

By  calling  God  absolute  it  is  meant,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
deny  that  he,  in  respect  of  his  Being  or  any  of  its  manifesta- 
tions, is  dependent  on  any  other  than  his  own  self-conscious, 
rational  will.  No  others,  no  finite  things  or  selves  belonging  to 
the  world  of  which  man  has  experience,  constitute  the  original 
ground  and  reason  of  the  divine  limitations,  whether  of  power, 
knowledge,  wisdom,  or  love.  He  is  in  his  essential  nature  ab- 
solved, absolute,  as  respects  dependence  upon  others.  But 
positively  considered,  his  absoluteness  is  such  that  He  is  the 
One  on  whom  all  beings,  both  things  and  selves,  are  dependent. 


468  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

In  his  self-conscious  and  rational  Will,  finite  existences  and 
events  have  their  Ground.  Outside,  or  beyond  the  control  of, 
this  self-conscious  and  rational  Will,  no  real  uniting  princi- 
ple for  the  cosmic  existences,  forces,  and  events,  can  anywhere 
be  found. 

In  brief,  by  speaking  of  God  as  infinite  and  absolute  the 
philosophy  of  religion  means  to  affirm  that  there  are  no  limita- 
tions to  the  self-conscious  rational  will  of  God  which  can  arise 
elsewhere  than  in  this  same  self-conscious  rational  Will.  God 
is  dependent  on  no  other  being  for  such  limitations  as  He 
chooses  to  observe.  God  wills  his  own  limitations.  And  he 
would  not  be  infinite,  or  absolute,  or  morally  perfect,  if  he  did 
not.  Will  that  is  not  self-controlled,  or  limited  by  the  reason 
or  purposes  known  to  itself,  is  neither  rational  nor  morally 
perfect  will.  On  the  other  hand,  all  finite  and  dependent  beings 
and  events  do  have  the  only  satisfactory  explanation  of  their 
existence  and  their  natures — that  they  are  at  all,  and  what 
they  are — in  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  One;  and  this  infinite 
and  absolute  Being  is  the  Object  presented  to  religious  faith 
as  its  ideal. 

The  objections  to  conceiving  of  the  World-Ground  as  an 
infinite  and  absolute  person,  in  order  to  fit  such  conception 
to  be  the  satisfying  Object  of  religious  faith,  arise  chiefly  on 
two  grounds.  They  are  either  predominatingly  metaphysical 
or — perhaps  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say,  psychological; 
or  else  they  are  ethical.  The  metaphysical  objections  revive 
the  claim  that  self-conscious  personal  being  cannot  be  infinite 
and  absolute;  the  ethical  objections  interpose  cautions  and  fears 
connected  with  the  integrity  and  values  of  the  moral  and 
religious  life.  The  former  may  be  removed  by  a  profounder 
metaphysics,  based  upon  a  truer  psychological  analysis;  the 
latter  may  be  reassured  by  pointing  the  way  to  a  more  philo- 
sophically satisfying  and  practically  useful  kind  of  faith. 

In   considering   critically   the    first   class   of    objections   our 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      469 

thought  is  brought  back  to  the  point  from  which  our  argu- 
ment set  forth.  It  can  now  be  made  clear  that  these  objections 
derive  their  power  to  confuse  and  deter  the  mind,  largely 
through  their  misuse  of  the  ambiguous  terms  "  infinite  "  and 
"  absolute."  That  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind 
cannot  also  be  conceived  of  as  infinite  and  absolute,  turns  out 
by  no  means  the  self-evident  proposition  which  it  has  been 
assumed  to  be.  Indeed,  certain  indications  appear  which  point 
in  the  opposite  direction.  Even  our  human  finite  and  depend- 
ent self-consciousness  does  not  have  its  most  essential  charac- 
teristics properly  described  by  such  terms  as  finite  and  de- 
pendent; much  less  by  such  meaningless  terms  as  no^-infinite 
or  no^-absolute.  In  other  words,  there  is  nothing  in  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  self-consciousness,  even  as  we  know  it  in  our- 
selves, to  show  that  the  range  of  its  grasp,  either  as  respects 
the  number  of  its  objects  or  its  speed  in  time,  determines  the 
possibility  of  its  very  existence.  On  the  contrary,  the  more 
perfect  our  self-consciousness  becomes,  the  more  manifold  are 
the  objects  which  it  clearly  displays  within  the  grasp  of  the 
one  activity  of  apprehending  the  Self.  Human  self-conscious- 
ness is  indeed  a  development;  and  at  its  highest  degree, 
whether  as  respects  the  multitude  of  its  objects,  or  their  rela- 
tions to  each  other  and  to  the  Self,  is  undoubtedly  a  meagre, 
a  limited  affair.  It  is  always  dependent  upon  conditions  over 
which  we  ourselves  have  little  or  no  control,  either  direct  or 
indirect.  But  in  it  is  the  very  type  and  the  supreme  example 
of  clear,  certain,  and  ontologically  valid  knowledge.  The 
amount  of  the  small  approaches  which  the  human  mind  can 
make  in  tlie  direction  of  becoming  the  Infinite  and  Absolute 
Mind,  is  tested  by  the  increase,  and  not  by  the  decrease,  of 
the  region  covered  by  the  individual's  self-conscious  life.  The 
richer  and  more  comprehensive  the  individual's  self -conscious- 
ness becomes,  the  more  do  the  limitations  of  his  finiteness 
recede.     The  more  the  Self  immediately  and  certainly  knows 


470  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  itself,  the  more  it  is  capable  of  knowing  about  other  selves 
and  things.  Thus  by  increasing  the  limits  of  self-conscious- 
ness, rather  than  by  relapsing  toward  the  unconscious  and  there- 
fore the  unknowable,  does  the  self-conscious  and  self-determin- 
ing mind  of  man  become  a  larger  and  a  clearer  "  mirror  of 
the  world."  For  example,  in  cases  of  intimate  friendship 
between  humian  beings  one  person  may  come  to  know  another 
person  with  a  suddenness,  clearness,  and  certainty  of  intu- 
ition, which  converts  the  ordinarily  slow,  obscure,  and  uncer- 
tain inferences  that  serve  us  men  for  knowing,  or  rather 
guessing  at,  the  thoughts  of  others,  into  the  semblance  of  a 
satisfactory  and  genuine  self-consciousness.  And  great  minds, 
who  observe  with  a  loving  sympathy  the  transactions  and  laws 
of  the  physical  world,  rise  at  times  to  experiences  which  seem 
to  approach,  if  they  do  not  fully  attain,  the  likeness  of  an  in- 
tuitive envisagement  of  Nature's  deeds  and  of  the  meaning  of 
those  deeds.  In  general,  the  more  of  objects  and  relations  the 
human  mind  can  take  up  into  its  apperceptive  and  self-con- 
scious experience,  the  more  freed  from  its  customary  limita- 
tions this  finite  and  dependent  mind  becomes.  In  a  word: 
The  perfecting  of  self-consciousness  tends  to  raise  the  mind 
toward  a  more  boundless  and  approximately  absolute  knowl- 
edge. 

But  it  is  urged  that  self -consciousness,  since  it  involves  the 
distinction  of  subject  and  object,  and  implies  the  setting  of 
the  Self  over  against  the  non-self,  is  essentially  an  affair  of 
limitations  and  of  dependent  relations  to  some  other  than  the 
Self.  That  self-consciousness  is,  for  all  human  selves,  thus 
limited  and  dependent,  may  be  admitted  as  often  as  the  ob- 
jector will.  Why  need  keep  on  repeating  that,  of  course,  this  is 
so?  But  when  this  human  limitation,  in  fact,  is  converted 
into  an  essential  characteristic  of  self-being  as  such,  the  argu- 
ment violates  every  truth  with  which  the  study  of  the  phe- 
nomena seems  to  make  us  familiar.  And  the  use  of  the  words 
infinite  and  absolute  reaches  the  height  of  their  misuse;  the 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      471 

object  of  self-consciousness  becomes  endowed  with  a  sort  of 
mystical  negating  and  limiting  power.  In  this  way  the  quite 
absurd  conclusion  is  arrived  at  that  my  Self  when  object,  in 
some  sort  hedges  in  and  conlines  the  activity  of  the  same  self 
when  acting  as  the  knowing  subject.  According  to  this  view, 
the  more  the  extension  of  the  object  is  increased,  the  more  the 
activity  and  reality  of  the  subject  should  be  diminished.  N"ow 
the  fact  of  experience  is  just  the  contrary.  In  the  growth  of 
a  Self,  the  subject  becomes  more  real  according  as  it  is  able 
to  unite  in  the  grasp  of  its  conscious  life  a  greater  number  of 
objects, — whether  these,  its  objects,  are  its  own  states  or  are 
so-called  external  objects.  For,  in  the  cognitive  act  the  rela- 
tion of  subject  and  object  is  not,  essentially  considered,  one  in 
which  the  two  limit  each  other;  it  is,  the  rather,  a  relation 
whose  essence  is  a  living  commerce  of  realities.  In  the  knowl- 
edge of  self-consciousness  the  relation  is  a  commerce  between 
dilYerent  aspects  of  one  and  the  same  reality. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  perfection  of  the  self-consciousness  of 
God  which  makes  it  possible  to  say  of  Him  that  he  is  infinite 
and  absolute.  It  is  this  very  conception  of  the  World-Ground 
as  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  or  Spirit,  which 
enables  the  finite  mind  to  transcend  the  inscription  on  the 
shrine  of  Athene-Isis  at  Sais :  "  I  am  all  that  was,  and  all  that 
is,  and  all  that  shall  be;  and  my  vail  hath  no  mortal  raised." 
But  this  affirmation  of  the  infinite  and  absolute  character  of  the 
self-conscious  personal  Being  of  the  Object  of  religious  faith 
is  not  simply  an  attempt  to  gather  under  the  obscuring  folds 
of  a  loose  and  purely  figurative  conception  a  lot  of  ill-sorted 
particulars  that  can  in  no  way  be  realized  together.  On  the 
contrary,  it  gives  us  an  all-comprehending  and  vital  princi- 
ple for  the  explanation  and  interpretation  of  the  system  of 
actual  things  and  selves,  such  as  can  be  won  by  reflective 
thinking  in  no  other  form.  It  permits  the  mind  to  conceive 
the  divine  knowledge  as  having  that  perfect  immediacy,  com- 
prehensiveness,   certainty,    value    for    trutli,    of    which    man's 


472  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

faint,  limited  and  mea^e  self-consciousness  is,  nevertheless, 
the  highest  type  of  his  actual  or  possible  experience.  It  also 
encourages  the  mind  to  regard  all  finite  beings  and  events  as 
essentially  and  constantly  dependent  upon  the  self-conscious 
and  rational  Will  of  God.  Thus  all  these  beings  and  events 
become  objects  of  the  divine  self-consciousness.  Science,  in 
fact,  takes  its  conception  of  "  Nature  "  or  the  "  Universe,"  in 
substantially  the  same  unlimited  way.  Out  of  It,  all  things 
come;  in  It,  all  things  are  included.  But  we  have  already 
seen  (pp.  2G1-2G7)  that,  in  order  to  do  this,  science  itself  must 
recognize  the  truth  that  Spirit  is  the  essence  of  Nature;  and 
that  the  uniting  force  of  the  Universe  is  a  Will  guided  by 
Ideas. 

The  ethical  recoil  from  certain  conclusions,  to  leap  to 
which  is  easy,  and  which  almost  seem  required  l)y  logical 
consistency  if  the  standpoint  of  a  personal  Absolute  is  to  be 
maintained,  deserves  sympathetic  and  patient  consideration. 
No  one,  however,  of  the  metaphysical  predicates  or  moral  at- 
tributes of  personal  being  is  to  be  understood  in  a  perfectly 
unlimited  or  absolute  way.  No  one  of  them  is  a  solitary  affair. 
Of  necessity  they  limit  each  other;  and  both  in  their  nature  and 
in  their  manifestation  they  are  mutually  dependent.  Personal- 
ity is  not  a  merely  unrelated  aggregate  of  independent  activi- 
ties. And  instead  of  its  perfection  requiring  or  permitting  the 
unrestricted  increase  of  any  one  of  its  essential  activities,  the 
case  is  quite  the  contrary.  No  finite  Self  makes  progress  toward 
an  escape  from  its  natural  limitations  by  letting  its  psychic 
forces  loose  from  the  control  of  wise  thoughts  and  morally 
good  motives.  Neither  can  wisdom  and  goodness  grow  in  any 
human  Self  while  the  real  core  of  selfhood,  the  control  of 
will,  is  being  corrupted  or  diminislicd.  Tbe  very  constitution 
of  personality  is  such  that  its  difPeront  attributes  arc  mutually 
dependent,  reciprocally  limited.  And  the  nicer  and  more  har- 
monious the  adjustment  becomes,  in  which  wisdom  and  good- 
ness  guide    powoi',    and    power   greatens  under   their   control, 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      473 

and  for  the  execution  of  their  ends,  the  neai-er  does  personah'ty 
approach  toward  the  type  of  the  infinite  and  the  absolute.  Or, 
— to  cease  from  so  abstract  a  manner  of  speaking — growth 
toward  the  perfection  of  personality  can  be  attained  only  as 
the  forms  of  personal  activity,  not  merely  become  greater  in 
amount,  but  also  more  harmoniously  active  in  the  unity  of  the 
one  personal  life. 

On  applying  these  considerations  to  the  Divine  Being  the 
conclusion  is  not  made  more  obscure,  nor  does  it  lie  farther 
away.  Because  God  is  essentially  personal,  a  self-conscious 
and  lational  Will,  the  different  predicates  and  attributes  un- 
der which  the  human  mind  must  conceive  of  Him  are  self- 
limiting  and  5e?/-consistent.  Tliis  is  to  say  that  they  limit  each 
other  according  to  that  conception  of  perfect  personality  which 
is  realized  in  God  alone.  But  the  ground  of  this  limitation  is 
in  no  respect,  when  essentially  considered,  outside  of,  or  inde- 
pendent of,  God  himself.  God's  infinite  power  is  not  blind 
and  brutish  force,  extended  beyond  all  limit  whatsoever  in  a 
purely  quantitative  way.  God's  infinite  power  is  always  lim- 
ited by  his  perfect  wisdom.  Even  the  purely  natural  sciences, 
when  forming  their  conclusions  without  any  recognized  influ- 
ence from  moral  or  religious  ideals,  admit  natural  forces  into 
the  account  only  as  regulated  by  natural  laws.  Neither  is  the 
divine  omniscience  an  ability  to  know,  or  mentally  to  repre- 
sent as  real  and  true,  what  is  not  real  or  what  is  irrational. 
God's  knowledge  is  limited  by  the  laws  of  reason;  but  in  the 
case  of  the  omniscient  One,  these  so-called  laws  are  only  the 
essential  forms  of  his  own  independent  rational  life.  That  is 
real,  to  which  this  infinite  and  absolute  Will  imparts  itself 
according  to  these  rational  forms. 

But,  in  even  a  special  way,  it  is  to  be  said  that  the  moral 
attributes  of  God  are  self -consistent  limitations  of  certain  of 
the  metaphysical  attributes.  If  the  divine  justice  or  goodness 
is  to  be  considered  as  perfect,  then  these  moral  attributes  must 
constantly    and    completely    qualify    the    divine    omnipotence. 


474  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

And  to  say  that  God  cannot  do  wrong,  when  one  is  satisfied 
that  his  righteousness  is  perfect,  is  not  to  limit  the  divine 
power  or  to  render  it  any  the  less  worthy  to  be  called  omnip- 
otence. In  all  the  discussion  evoked  by  the  attempt  to  apply 
such  terms  as  infinite  and  absolute  to  God,  it  is  the  unifying 
nature  of  his  Personality — perfectly  self-dependent  and  self- 
consistent — which  affords  both  the  theoretical  and  the  practical 
solution  of  the  same  problems,  if  these  problems  are  to  be 
solved  at  all.  How  can  God  be  infinite  and  absolute,  and  at 
the  same  time  personal?  To  this  inquiry  one  may  answer: 
Just  because  he  is  personal.  How  shall  self-consistency  be 
introduced  into  this  complex  of  metaphysical  predicates  and 
moral  attributes  with  which  man's  religious  feeling  and  philo- 
sophical thinking  have  filled  out  the  conception  of  the  Object 
of  religious  faith  ?  By  more  and  more  expanding  this  same 
conception  as  that  of  a  perfect,  and  therefore  infinite  and  abso- 
lute Person. 

The  growth  of  that  ideal  of  the  World-Ground  which  is 
represented  by  the  conception  of  God  as  infinite  and  absolute 
Person,  has  its  roots  deep  down  in  religious  feeling  and  also 
in  philosophical  reflection.  The  impression  made  upon  the 
mind  of  man  by  his  total  environment  is  one  of  mystery, 
majesty,  and  illimitable  force,  in  space  and  in  time.  What  is 
greater  than  all  his  eye  can  see,  or  his  hand  touch,  or  his  in- 
tellect measure  and  comprehend,  but  the  invisible  Cause  of 
it  all  ?  In  these  vague  feelings  religion  and  art  find  a  com- 
mon impulse;  and  later  on,  if  not  at  once,  philosophy  as  well. 
But  science  and  philosophy  aim  not  simply  to  feel,  but  also 
to  comprehend,  this  mysterious,  majestic,  and  infinitely  ex- 
tended Being  of  the  World.  And  by  their  studies  of  IT, 
through  centuries  of  time,  they  arrive  at  the  conviction  of  its 
real  unity.  It  is  itself  real,  and  it  is  the  source  or  Ground  of 
all  particular  realities;  It  gives  laws  and  life  to  all  the  forms 
and  relations  of  finite  realities.  Such  is  the  reasoned  con- 
viction   which    comes    to    enforce    these    feelings    of    mystery, 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      475 

majesty,  and  limitless  power  and  extent,  in  space  and  in  time, 
that  are  called  forth  by  man's  experience  with  the  cosmic  ex- 
istences, forces,  and  processes. 

And  now  the  inquiry  arises  and  presses  for  an  answer:  In 
what  terms  shall  the  mind  best  express  its  grasp  upon  the 
Object  of  this  reasoned  conviction?  That  it  is  a  perfectly 
comprehensible,  not  to  say  a  perfectly  comprehended,  concep- 
tion, cannot  of  course  be  maintained.  The  most  dogmatic 
theology,  or  self-confident  philosophy,  or  boastful  science, 
would  scarcely  venture  to  affirm  as  much  as  this.  With  differ- 
ent meanings  and  yet  in  substantial  unison,  they  must  all  con- 
fess: "There  was  the  door  to  which  I  found  no  key."  Inas- 
much as  no  finite  thing,  however  mean,  and  no  casual  event, 
however  trifling,  offers  itself  to  man's  mind  in  a  way  to  en- 
sure a  complete  compreliension,  one  may  be  the  more  ready  to 
hasten  the  admission  with  regard  to  the  problem  of  the  Uni- 
verse itself :  "  It  is  as  high  as  heaven,  what  canst  thou  do  ? 
deeper  than  hell,  what  canst  thou  know  ? "  This  attitude 
of  reflection  is  everywhere  met  in  the  history  of  human  re- 
flective thinking;  it  is  the  inevitable  and  logical  result  of  con- 
templating the  problems  offered  by  the  religious  conception 
of  God  as  infinite  and  absolute;  it  is  found  alike  in  pantheistic 
theosophy  and  in  Christian  mysticism.  Hence  it  is  that  Pis- 
tis  Sophia,  a  book  whose  very  title  is  significant  of  the  deter- 
mination to  resolve  faith  into  an  esoteric  theory  of  the  Divine 
Being,  raises  the  question :  "  How  is  it  tliat  the  first  mystery 
hath  twelve  mysteries,  whereas  that  Ineffable  hath  but  one 
mystery?"  And  the  Upanishads,  whose  discovery,  says  Pro- 
fessor Hopkins,  (The  Eeligions  of  India,  p.  224),  is  a  "rela- 
tivity of  divinity,"  abound  in  passages  declaring  the  incompre- 
hensible character  of  God.  Scarcely  less  true  is  this  of  the 
biblical  writings.  But  men,  declares  a  modern  Hindu  writer, 
"for  the  practical  purposes  of  their  existence,  need  to  get  God 
and  not  merely  to  have  a  Jcnowledge  of  him." 

Neither  this,  nor  any  other  rational  view,  however,  regard- 


476  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

ing  the  incomprehensible  nature  of  God  as  infinite  and  abso- 
lute, is  the  equivalent  of  the  doctrine  that  the  tenet  itself  is 
inconceivahle  in  the  meaning  in  which  this  word  is  so  fre- 
quently employed.  The  infiniteness  of  God  cannot,  indeed, 
be  conceived  by  repeated  and  cumulative  activities  of  the  mind 
in  a  time-series;  or  by  pushing  imagination,  as  it  were,  to 
transcend  at  a  bound  the  limitations  of  spatial  perception 
or  of  the  numerical  expressions  for  sums  in  energetics.  But 
the  relief  from  such  futile  attempts  is  by  no  means  to  be 
found  in  a  sluggish  repose  of  intellect,  or  in  so-called  faith 
in  a  Reality  which  is  inconceivable,  because  such  faith  implies 
the  effort  to  grasp  together  in  a  single  ideal  mutually  exclu- 
sive or  self-contradictory  ideas.  An  irrational  faith  is  no 
worthy  substitute  for  an  irrational  thought. 

The  valid  conclusion  of  our  discussion  is,  the  rather,  that 
we  may — nay,  must — believe  in  God  and  think  of  God,  in 
terms  of  self-conscious  and  rational,  that  is  Personal  Life. 
And  this  we  may  do  without  fear  that  the  course  of  our  be- 
lieving and  thinking  will  be  compelled  to  terminate,  either 
against  an  impassable  wall  at  the  end  of  a  blind  alley,  or  in  a 
bottomless  and  darksome  bog,  where  shadows  of  abstractions 
allure  the  mind  onward  to  increasing  dangers,  but  can  never 
lead  it  into  a  region  of  light  and  safety.  The  conception  of 
God  as  infinite  and  absolute  is,  indeed,  an  ideal  which  can 
never  be  exhaustively  explored,  or  fully  compassed  by  the  finite 
mind.  But  just  as  modern  science,  while  it  is  learning  more 
and  more  the  limitations  which  beset  its  utmost  efforts  to  ex- 
pound its  own  fundamental  conceptions  and  postulates,  never- 
theless understands  these  conceptions  better  and  better,  and 
continually  validates  these  postulates  more  satisfactorily;  so 
may  it  be  with  the  philosophy  of  religion.  From  similar  ef- 
forts, when  directed  toward  the  Object  of  religious  faith,  the 
reflective  thinking  of  mankind  can  never  be  frightened  away, 
whether  by  agnostic  fears  or  by  awe  in  the  presence  of  incom- 
prehensible mysteries.     This  conception  of  God  justifies,  while 


THE  WORLD-GROUND  AS  ABSOLUTE  PERSON      177 

it  does  not  destroy  but  the  rather  enhances,  the  profoundcst 
sesthetical  and  religious  feeling.  And  it  is  at  the  same  time 
so  increasingly  satisfactory  to  the  reason,  as  the  reason  is 
employed  in  the  growth  of  science  and  in  the  speculations  of 
philosophy,  as  to  entitle  its  conclusions  to  the  position  of  an 
accepted  theory  of   Reality,  as  the  postulated  World-Ground. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT 

The  metaiDliYsics  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences  not 
infrequently  assumes  to  treat  of  all  phenomena  as  belonging 
to  a  6e//-explanatory,  se //-contained,  and  se//-maintaining  sys- 
tem. Tliis  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  all  operative  causes 
and  actual  relations  which  make  the  phenomena  better  under- 
stood by  our  minds  must  be  either  found,  or  reasonably  postu- 
lated to  be  found,  within  the  system  itself.  To  admit  the 
breaking-in  upon  Nature,  in  the  large  meaning  of  the  word, 
of  that  which  is  super-natural  or  ex-^ra-natural,  is  not  a  form 
of  explanation  which  science  can  tolerate.  Now  the  postulate 
which  reflective  thinking  upon  the  phenomena  of  religious 
experience  aims  to  establish,  has  much  of  this  same  merit  in  a 
yet  higher  degree.  So  far  as  certain  metaphysical  predicates 
are  concerned,  the  conception  of  the  World-Ground  as  Abso- 
lute Person  needs  no  supplementing  by  way  of  attributes  that 
do  not  essentially  belong  to  itself.  For  example :  Omnip- 
otence, omnipresence,  eternity,  omniscience,  and  unity;  these 
are  essential  to  the  very  conception  of  Absolute  Person.  But 
plainly,  with  the  possible  exception  of  omniscience,  there  is 
no  more  mystery  or  confusion  about  all  this  way  of  thinking 
of  the  sc//-sufficiency  of  the  World,  wlien  it  is  assumed  in  terms 
of  the  philosophy  of  religion  than  when  the  same  thing  is 
taken  for  granted  as  a  basis  for  the  positive  sciences.  And 
even  with  regard  to  omniscience,  it  is  by  no  means  clear  how 
all  the  particular  sciences  taken  together  are  going  to  explain 
a  System,  which  is  orderly,  law-abiding,  and  framed  after  the 
pattern  of  ideas,  without  assuming  the  control  of  an  all- 
embracing  mind  as  its  immanent  reason, 

478 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  471) 

That  God  may  have  these  metaphysical  predicates  logically 
applied  to  him  follows  from  the  very  conception  of  (iod.  It 
is  desirable,  however,  that  they  should  be  defined  in  sucli  man- 
ner— so  far  as  this  is  possible — as  to  harmonize  with  one  an- 
other and  with  those  moral  attributes  which  religious  faith 
attributes  to  its  Object,  for  the  more  complete  satisfaction  of 
human  ethical  and  a;sthetical  sentiments  and  ideals.  When  con- 
ceived of  in  this  way,  omnipotence  has  both  its  negative  and 
its  positive  aspect.  Conceived  of  as  power,  God  is  infinite 
and  absolute.  There  is  no  conceivable  limit  to  his  power  other 
than  that  which  he  puts  upon  it;  and  for  its  possession  and 
exercise  he  is  dependent  upon  no  other  and  is  bounded  by  no 
other.  But  as  thought  of  in  a  positive  way,  religion  acknowl- 
edges the  Omnipotent  One  as  the  source  of  all  actual  and 
possible  forces;  as  the  inexhaustible  fountain  of  all  the  cos- 
mic manifestations  of  energy,  and  the  spring  from  which  come 
all  the  so-called  human  powers  of  psycho-physical  and  mental 
activity.  In  the  practical  life  of  religion,  this  view  excites 
and  supports  the  feelings  and  the  conduct  on  the  part  of  man 
which  are  appropriate  to  his  immediate  and  constant  depend- 
ence upon  God.  To  religious  faith  it  supplies  the  motive  and 
the  assurance  for  filial  piety,  trust,  and  hope.  To  the  unbe- 
liever it  may  become  a  chastening  and  morally  corrective 
thought.  For  the  will  of  God  is  sweet  or  bitter  to  the  taste, 
according  to  the  way  in  which  it  is  taken. 

The  doctrine  of  the  divine  omnipresence,  negatively  taken, 
denies  that  the  Divine  Being  is  subject  to  the  spatial  attributes 
and  spatial  relations  which  limit  the  presence  and  the  power 
of  all  finite  beings,  both  things  and  selves.  It  also  denies  that 
God  is  to  be  conceived  of  as  over  against  the  World,  in  a 
gw<25t-spatial  and  temporal  way.  Positively  taken,  omnipres- 
ence predicates  the  power  and  co-conscious  being  of  God,  here 
and  now,  without  distinctions  of  space  and  time.  To  religious 
thought  and  feeling  He  is  the  One: — 


480  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

"  Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air. 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man." 


For  the  philosophy  of  religion  this  view  maintains  the  be- 
lief in  the  universal  immanence  of  the  Divine  power,  knowl- 
edge, and  goodness;  and  it  also  sustains  the  argument  which 
looks  to  his  self-conscious  and  self-determining  Will  as  the 
ground  and  explanation  of  all  spatial  relations  and  spatial  dis- 
tinctions. Thus  for  religious  faith  and  the  conduct  founded 
upon  it,  there  is  no  existence,  and  no  place,  and  no  event  that 
can  be  freed  from  all  the  fullness  of  the  presence  of  God. 

The  predicate  of  eternity,  both  negatively  and  positively 
taken,  does  much  the  same  thing  for  our  human  conception 
of  God  as  related  to  the  category  of  tiine,^  which  the  predicate 
of  omnipresence  does  for  the  conception  of  God  and  for  the 
category  of  space.  The  conception  of  eternity,  however,  must  by 
no  means  be  confused  with  the  wholly  negative  and  self-contra- 
dictory theological  phrase  of  an  "  eternal  now."  Limitations 
of  time,  as  man  experiences  them,  where  all  his  activities  of 
body  and  mind  take  place,  feebly,  fitfully,  and  confined  with 
the  narrow  lines  of  a  temporal  series,  do  not  apply,  either  in 
fact  or  in  idea,  to  the  Absolute  Person.  But  the  positive  con- 
ception of  eternity  cannot,  of  course,  l)e  attained  by  any  man- 
ner or  measure  of  the  addition  together  of  portions  of  time. 
So  far  as  the  efforts  of  the  human  mind  are  able  at  all  to  ap- 
prehend what  it  cannot  comprehend,  the  results  of  these  efforts 
may  perhaps  best  be  stated  in  something  like  the  following 
way:  "The  world's  absolute  and  universal  time  is  the  actual 
succession  of  states  in  the  all-comprcliending  Life  of  God. 
If  then  one  is  willing  to  substitute  for  the  abstract,  mathe- 
matical symbol  of  infinity   (  oo  )    the  conception  of  the  life  of 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  conception  of 
"  Time,"  see  Chapter  VIII  in  the  author's  Theory  of  Reality  (Chas. 
Scribner's  Sons,  1S99). 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  481 

an  absolute  person,  one  may  validate  both  the  popular  and  the 
scientific  assumption  of  an  absolute  time  in  which  all  the 
events  of  the  world  are  ever  taking  place.  This  conception  is 
that  oi  a  series  which  must  indeed  be  conceived  of  time-wise, 
but  which  involves  the  denial  of  a  beginning  or  end  to  itself; 
a  series  that,  for  every  now,  or  oo ,  reaches  both  backward  and 
forward  to  oo/i.  The  transcendent  reality  of  time  is  thus  con- 
ceived of  as  the  all-comprehending  Life  of  an  Absolute 
Person." 

Most  important,  however,  for  religious  faith  is  the  meta- 
physical predicate  of  omniscience,  when  attributed  to  the  Ob- 
ject of  faith.  Indeed,  omniscience  seems  to  imply  and  include 
all  the  other  metaphysical  predicates,  while  it  is  a  sort  of  pre- 
liminary necessity,  as  it  were,  to  the  perfection  of  the  moral 
attributes.  In  all  religions,  the  gods,  or  invisible  and  super- 
human spirits,  have  been  supposed  to  know  more  than  men. 
The  concentration  of  knowledge  in  "one  Divine  Being  is  there- 
fore assumed  and  naively  expressed  for  all  kinds  of  monothe- 
ism, in  these  sentences  from  the  Koran :  "  With  him  are  the 
keys  of  the  unseen.  None  knows  them  save  He;  but  He 
knows  what  is  on  the  land  and  in  the  sea;  and  there  falls  not 
a  leaf,  save  that  He  knows  it;  nor  a  grain  in  the  darkness  of 
the  earth ;  nor  aught  that  is  dry,  save  that  this  is  in  his  per- 
spicuous book."  Those  limitations  of  content,  clearness,  and 
accuracy,  to  which  all  finite  experience  is  subjected,  and  which 
can  never  be  removed  for  the  minds  of  men,  do  not  apply  to 
the  infinite  and  absolute  knowledge  of  God.  And  for  the  posi- 
tive conception  of  the  Divine  omniscience  we  are  at  liberty  to 
employ  the  highest  possible,  and  even  conceivable  type  of 
human  knowledge,  as  a  help  to  the  imagination.  All  his 
knowledge,  which  extends  to  all  objects  and  all  events,  has 
the  immediateness,  clearness,  certainty,  and  fullness  of  con- 
tent, of  which  we  have  only  a  faint  and  imperfect  type  in  our 
most  highly  developed  self-consciousness.  Thus  the  religious 
man  knows  that  nothing  which  he  thinks,  or  feels,  or  plans, 


483  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

is  hidden  from  God;  and  also  that  for  this  thinking,  feeling, 
and  planning  he  is  absolutely  and  momently  dependent  upon 
the  immanent  power  of  God. 

The  ethical,  psychological,  and  metaphysical  objections 
which  may  be  urged  against  this  view  of  the  method  of  the 
Divine  omniscience,  as  a  species  of  co-consciousness,  whether 
.they  can  be  satisfactorily  answered  or  not,  do  not  impair  the 
value,  for  purposes  of  the  practical  life,  of  the  postulate  itself. 
Somehow,  God  knows  it  all.  But,  in  our  judgment,  these  ob- 
jections do  not  weigh  at  all  heavily  against  this  doctrine  of 
the  type  of  that  knowledge  which  is  to  be  thought  of  as  in- 
finite and  absolute.  Indeed,  the  objection,  when  made  on 
moral  grounds,  that  in  this  way  God  becomes,  as  it  were,  the 
self-conscious  and  planful  author  of  error  and  sin,  has  really  no 
significance  at  all  in  this  connection.  For  it  is  not  the  cogni- 
tive relation,  the  relation  of  knowledge,  in  which  one  person's 
thought  and  planning  stands  to  another  person's  thought  and 
planning,  that  immediately  affects  the  freedom  of  either.  It 
is,  the  rather,  the  relation  in  which  one  otherwise  self-deter- 
mining will  stands  to  another  will.  I  may  not  only  predict 
without  doubt  how  another  will  choose,  but  even  know  with- 
out uncertainty  how  he  is  choosing;  but  if  I  choose  that  this 
other  do  the  choosing,  he  may  be  as  free  in  his  choosing  as 
though  I  had  no  knowledge  of  him  at  all.  Nor  from  the 
psychological  point  of  view  does  it  seem  as  though  sclf-con- 
sciousness  and  another's  co-consciousness  were  in  any  respect, 
of  necessity,  mutually  exclusive.  On  the  contrary,  they  may 
be  regarded  as  different  aspects  of  one  undivided  experience, 
even  in  the  case  of  human  relations.  Indeed,  other-conscious- 
ness and  self-consciousness  grow  together;  and  especially  is 
this  the  case  with  human  spirits  that  are  most  akin  and  most 
intimate.  For  the  pious  soul,  no  other  thought  is  more  wel- 
come, and  brings  more  of  comfort  and  strength,  than  the 
thought  of  the  immanent  presence  of  the  omniscient  spirit, 
with  and  in  itself.     The  metaphysical  difficulty  which  arises 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  483 

to  obscure  all  discussion  as  to  how  God  can  know  the  future, 
if  it  is  not  relieved  by  the  conception  of  the  Divine  self-con- 
sciousness as  extending  to  all  existences,  all  relations,  and  all 
events,  is  at  any  rate — it  seems  to  us — not  increased  by  this 
conception.  Certainly,  the  human  mind  cannot  worthily  rep- 
resent to  itself  the  omniscience  of  God,  as  extending  over  all 
future  time,  after  the  species  of  a  shrewd  guess  or  a  conclu- 
sion arrived  at  as  the  terminal  of  a  careful  mathematical 
calculation.  But  when  in  any  way  the  completeness  of  the 
conception  of  the  metaphysical  predicate  of  omniscience,  as  ap- 
plied to  the  Object  of  religious  faith,  is  sacrificed,  in  the  sup- 
posed interests  of  mean's  moral  freedom,  the  cause  of  this  same 
freedom  receives  much  more  harm  than  assistance.  God  is 
omniscient ;  and  the  future  is  in  his  hands,  because  he  knows 
it  and  he  has  power  over  it.  Thus  much  belongs  to  Him  as 
Absolute  Person;  and  if  he  is  also  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  his 
knowledge  is  not  inconsistent  with  his  wisdom  and  justice; 
neither  will  his  power  be  abused  for  the  impairment  of  either 
of  these  moral  qualities  in  man. 

The  unity,  or  one-ness,  of  God  is  not  an  affair  of  mathemat- 
ical quantity.  As  Absolute  Person  he  is,  with  a  metaphysical 
or  ontological  certainty,  the  Alone  God.  There  is  and  can  be, 
no  other  than  He.  But  positively  regarded,  this  unity  is  that 
which  must  be  conceived  of  by  the  human  mind  in  terms  of 
the  highest  type  of  conceivable  unity.  This  is  the  unity  of  a 
self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind.  That  the  Object 
of  religious  faith  is,  in  reality,  such  a  unity — why,  this  is 
the  conclusion  which  we  have  been  enabled  to  reach  by  the  en- 
tire course  of  our  previous  argument. 

The  nature  of  the  argument — so  far  as  it  can  be  called 
argument  at  all — changes  when  we  come  to  consider  the  rea- 
sons which  have  led  mankind  in  history,  to  the  attribution 
of  moral  perfection  to  the  Object  of  religious  faith.  The  be- 
lief in  God  as  holy,  or  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  is  indeed  a  pos- 
tulate which  reposes  upon  the  highest  developments  of  religious 


484  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

experience.  But  the  reasoning  by  which  it  is  supported  is 
plainly  of  a  circular  character.  This  circular  course  is  chiefly 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  human  mind  is  somehow  compelled 
to  "  get  around "  the  presence  of  an  undeniably  monstrous 
amount  of  what  seems  to  it  like  real  evil  in  that  system  of 
things  and  selves  which  constitutes  man's  physical  and  social 
environment.  To  state  the  case  of  this  peculiar  circulus  in 
arguendo  somewhat  bluntly,  When  the  question  is  asked: 
"  How  do  you  solve  the  problem  of  evil  ?  "  the  reply  of  religion 
is  somewhat  like  this :  "  By  faith  in  a  perfectly  good  and  just, 
or  holy  God."  But  when  the  question  is  turned  about :  "  How 
do  you  reach  and  justify  this  faith?"  the  inquirer  is  apt  to 
be  told,  virtually,  that  it  is  "  because  this  faith  either  solves, 
or  greatly  relieves,  the  painful  pressure  of  the  problem  of 
evil." 

Now  neither  on  experiential  nor  on  philosophical  grounds 
can  a  solution  of  tlie  problem  of  evil  be  given  in  a  manner  to 
satisfy  both  the  intellect  and  the  ethical  and  eesthetical  senti- 
ments of  the  race.  The  fact  that  much  of  what  seems  to  our 
minds  unnecessary  pain  and  waste,  intellectual  blindness,  and 
moral  failure  and  degradation,  is  provided  for,  as  it  were,  in 
the  very  constitution  of  things  and  of  selves,  cannot  be  suc- 
cessfully disputed.  On  the  other  hand,  as  the  larger  view  of 
the  profounder  significance  and  more  nearly  ultimate  tenden- 
cies of  the  cosmic  system,  in  its  relation  to  human  interests, 
is  gained;  certain  principles  are  being  slowly  won  from  experi- 
ence which  greatly  soften  our  judgment  as  to  the  Being  of 
the  World,  in  regard  to  its  indifference  to  pain  and  waste  and 
sin.  Biological  science  points  out:  (1)  how  the  very  consti- 
tution of  all  animal  life,  including  man's,  is  such  as  to  limit  the 
endurance  of  suffering;  (2)  how  provision  is  made  for  much 
enjoyment  and  for  the  easement  of  pain,  in  all  animal  life; 
and  (3)  how  the  animals,  the  lower  races  of  men,  and  the  chil- 
dren of  the  more  sensitive  races,  really  suffer  much  less  than 
the  hypersesthetic  observer  imagines  that  they  do.    Much  more 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  485 

impressive,  however,  is  the  evidence  afforded  by  the  biological 
theory  of  evolution;  this  theory  is  more  clearly  showing  that 
much,  if  not  all,  of  this  vast  amount  of  pain  and  waste  eventu- 
ally results  in  the  uplift  of  life  toward  higher  stages  of  the 
realization  of  its  own  ideals. 

But  above  all  do  we  esteem  it  necessary  to  a  just  and  fair 
estimate  of  the  problem  of  evil,  that  the  points  of  view  pecu- 
liar to  moral  and  aesthetical  sentiments,  judgments,  and  ideals, 
should  be  steadfastly  maintained.  From  these  points  of  view, 
as  we  have  already  seen  while  standing  in  them,  the  Being  of 
the  World  does  not  appear  to  be  aiming  at  any  short  cut  to 
procuring  a  complete  and  temporary  satisfaction  for  the  ap- 
petites, passions,  and  desires  of  all  those  sensitive  natures 
which  It  enfolds,  and  nourishes  or  destroys,  within  its  own 
Nature.  If,  then,  the  so-called  "  instrumental  theory  *'  is 
applied  to  the  problem,  and  it  is  maintained  that  somehow 
the  pain  and  waste  involved  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and 
indeed  in  existence  itself  on  any  terms,  are  the  indispensable 
means  for  the  development  of  life  under  existing,  and  even 
under  any  reasonably  conceivable  conditions ;  then  the  confidence 
of  the  religious  consciousness  may  claim  in  some  large  way  to 
have  the  voice  of  science  on  its  side.  And  the  disciplinary 
value  for  the  higher  end  of  moral  and  artistic,  as  well  as, 
chiefly,  religious,  culture  adds  great  weight  to  the  argument 
for  a  so-called  theodicy. 

When,  however,  the  side  of  the  problem  which  considers  the 
amounts,  the  causes,  and  the  results,  of  so-called  "  moral  evil," 
is  approached,  the  course  of  reasoning  and  argument  is  by  no 
means  so  easy  or  so  clearly  marked  out.  That  pain  is  a  neces- 
sary instrument  to  the  development,  and  even  to  the  existence, 
of  all  finite  spiritual  life,  has  been  held  to  be  true  by  writers 
on  morals  from  time  immemorial.  "  When  a  difficulty  falls 
upon  you,"  says  an  ancient  author,  "  remember  that  God.  like 
a  trainer  of  wrestlers,  has  matched  you  with  a  rough  young 
man."     But  it  is   "  that  you   may  become   an   Olympic   con- 


486  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

queror."  "  Without  pain,"  says  a  modern  writer,  "  it  does  not 
seem  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  conld  arise  from  the  physical 
life."  In  accordance  with  this  view,  the  developmental  theory 
of  man's  ethical  and  aesthetical  progress  undertakes  to  show 
how  moral  failure  and  obliquity,  and  even  moral  disease  and 
death,  in  overwhelming  numbers  of  the  race,  have  served  as 
means  to  the  spiritual  uplift  of  humanity.  The  essential 
value  of  struggle  with  temptation,  and  of  experience  with  the 
results  of  yielding  to  temptation,  may  also  be  estimated  in  a 
way  greatly  to  reinforce  the  claim  that  much  sinning  is  an  in- 
dispensable prerequisite  to  some  holiness. 

A  vast  amount  of  pain  there  is,  however,  which  does  not 
appear  to  serve  the  ministrations  of  a  higher  good,  whether  of 
happiness  or  of  moral  purity.  It  is  just  this  inevitable  and 
overwhelming  amount  of  suffering  and  struggle  for  bare  ex- 
istence which  has  prevented  most  of  the  race  from  reaching 
the  higher  and  more  valuable  forms  of  intellectual,  social, 
artistic,  and  even  of  ethical  and  religious  satisfaction.  Besides 
this,  the  distribution  of  suffering,  and  its  consequent  tempta- 
tions to  wrong-doing,  is  so  apparently  unjust  as  to  constitute 
in  itself  one  of  the  darkest  aspects  of  the  problem  of  evil. 
Even  if  this  difficulty  be  lessened  or  diverted  by  any  theory 
of  future  rewards  and  punishments, — whether  in  the  vague, 
indefinite  form  of  Karma,  or  the  more  definite  form  of  Chris- 
tian orthodoxy — the  theory  of  itself  cannot  be  established  sat- 
isfactorily except  in  dependence  upon  that  faith  in  the  Divine 
ethical  perfection,  which  it  is  itself  expressly  designed  to  sup- 
port. Here  again,  then,  we  encounter  the  same  vicious  (  ?) 
circle  in  the  argument.  There  is  truth,  therefore,  in  the 
assertion  of  Eucken  that  the  "  medicinal  theory,"  as  applied 
to  the  problem  of  evil,  makes  of  the  whole  subject  a  yet  more 
insoluble  riddle. 

The  difficulties  of  the  problem  of  evil  are  all  accentuated 
and  complicated  when  the  problem  takes  the  form  of  a  The- 
odicy, or  an  attempt  to  justify  completely,  to  man,  the  ways 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  487 

of  God  with  man.  For  while  the  pantheistic  and  pessimistic 
theories  of  the  World's  origin  and  development  allow  of 
ascrihing  its  load  of  evils  to  the  irrationality  of  a  wholly 
blind  Will,  or  to  the  unconscious  striving  of  an  immanently 
teleological  but  impersonal  Will;  monotheistic  religion — and 
especially  Christianity — must  consider  the  reasons  for  the  ex- 
istence and  prevalence  of  evil  to  be  found  in  God  as  the 
Creator,  Preserver,  and  moral  Euler  of  the  universe.  In  God, 
then,  must  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  be  found,  if  it 
is  to  bo  found  at  all.  Plato  saw  this;  and  his  treatment  of  the 
dilTicult  subject  in  the  "Republic"  (book  X)  is  in  all  essen- 
tial respects  a  theistic,  and  even  a  Christian  theodicy. 

But,  second,  the  very  attempt  at  any  such  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil  as  religion  proposes  implies  the  firm  belief, 
if  not  the  demonstrated  truth,  that  the  world  as  known  to 
man,  is  a  moral  system.  Indeed,  all  arguments,  both  pro  and 
con,  and  the  very  effort  either  to  erect  or  to  destroy  a  tenable 
tlieodicy,  agree  upon  the  postulate  that  the  Being  of  the 
World  is  a  subject  for  moral  judgments.  Were  it  not  so,  the 
natural  forces,  processes,  laws,  etc.,  of  the  world,  could  give 
no  evidence  either  for  or  against  its  own  moral  attributes. 
He  who  does  not  believe  in  some  kind  of  an  ethical  nature  as 
belonging  to  the  World-Ground,  can  neither  be  resigned  to 
the  Divine  Will  and  live  piously,  nor  "  curse  God  and  die," — 
while  at  the  same  time  maintaining  the  slightest  claim  to  ra- 
tional consistency. 

Hence,  third,  the  necessity  of  considering  the  problem  in  a 
large  way,  and  in  its  totality.  This  totality  concerns  the  sys- 
tem of  all  known  or  knowable  things  and  selves,  if  regarded 
in  some  way  independent  and  connected,  but  only,  of  course, 
very  imperfectly  understood,  and  even  as  yet  very  partially 
discovered.  This  totality  also  embraces  the  boundless  stretches 
of  the  world's  time,  not  only  backward  but  also  into  its 
prospective  future.  The  problem  of  evil  is  not  the  problem  of 
a  day,  or  of  a  century,  or  of  a  thousand  years. 


488  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

The  so-called  "  argument  from  ignorance,"  illogical  and 
unscientific  as  it  usually  is,  does  not  seem  to  be  wholly  out  of 
place  in  dealing  with  the  problem  of  evil  in  this  large  and 
universal  way.  Indeed,  the  particular  sciences  make  no  small 
use  of  a  similar  method  of  reasoning,  although  in  a  concealed 
and  half-hearted  manner.  They  always  espouse  the  cause  of 
order  and  law,  against  the  evidence  which  seems  to  be  in 
favor  of  a  temporary  and  local  reign  (?)  of  chaos  and  old 
night.  Nature,  when  summoned  before  the  bar  of  human  rea- 
son and  accused  of  the  crimes  of  disorder  and  law-breaking, 
is  invariably  given  by  her  devoted  disciples  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt.  Her  lawyers  plead  her  cause  very  lustily,  and  yet  by 
no  means  always  in  strictly  logical  form,  before  her  defamers. 
But  why  should  man,  who  does  not  hesitate  to  break  the  laws 
of  Nature  and  suffer  the  consequences  in  the  way  of  physical 
disease  and  death,  curse  the  same  Nature  for  instituting  and 
enforcing  these  laws,  even  as  against  his  desires  and  cherished 
interests,  and  in  spite  of  his  ignorance?  Is  it  any  more  rea- 
sonable to  curse  Nature  and  so  die  in  mind  and  "spirit  at  her 
cruel  and  tyrannical  feet,  than  to  curse  God  and  die  at  the 
foot  of  his  throne?  On  the  contrary,  the  religious  postulate 
of  the  perfection  of  the  Ethical  Spirit  which  it  devoutly 
ascribes  to  the  AVorld-Ground  is  more  faithful  and  loyal  to 
its  Object,  and  scarcely  less  consistent  and  conclusive  in  its 
logic,  than  is  the  corresponding  scientific  assumption.  Eeligion 
clings  to  its  faith  in  the  perfect  justice  and  goodness  of  God; 
it  magnifies  the  evidence  in  the  favor  of  this  faith,  and  it 
minimizes  or  wholly  disregards  the  evidence  which  is  against 
this  faith.  This  it  does,  chiefly  for  the  very  same  two  reasons 
which  so  powerfully  influence  the  particular  sciences:  (1)  The 
evidence  for  faith  is  constantly  accumulating  in  the  develop- 
ment of  man's  religious  experience — and  that  most,  in  the 
highest  and  best  experience;  (2)  the  faith  itself  is  so  satisfy- 
ing to   the   intellectual   and    sentimental    interests   of   religion, 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  489 

and  so  helpful  for  the  strengthening  and  nplift  of  the  life  of 
endurance,  duty  and  achievement. 

The  lower  forms  of  religion  have  little  or  no  difficulty  with 
the  problem  of  evil.  According  to  their  beliefs,  there  are 
some  good  gods,  indeed;  but  there  are  even  more  devils  and 
bad  gods.  Why  should  there  not  be?  And  why  should  not 
man's  experience  of  both  good  and  evil,  as  due  to  the  influ- 
ences of  invisible  spirits,  be  divided  in  accordance  with  the 
facts  of  the  life  of  each  individual,  between  the  two?  But  the 
development  of  reflective  thinking  and  of  moral  sentiment  and 
judgment  inevitably  enforces  some  species  of  ethical  and 
philosophical  Dualism.  Both,  mobs  or  groups,  off  spirits  be- 
come organized  socially;  and  the  two  must  then  be  placed  in 
some  sort  of  a  struggle  for  equality,  or  one  must  be  subor- 
dinated to  the  other.  Thus  the  resulting  dualistic  solution 
of  the  problem  of  evil  assumes  one  of  two  principal  forms. 
Either  the  two  kinds  of  invisible  spiritual  agencies  continue  to 
exist  after  the  analogy  of  a  human  social  organization;  or 
else  each  of  them  becomes  hypostasized  in  some  one  divine 
being.  There  is  Ahura-Mazda,  King  of  Light;  and  there  is 
Ahriman,  King  of  Darkness — wholly  good  God  and  wholly 
bad  Devil.  Enormous  as  are  the  difficulties  which  any  logical 
and  consistent  system  of  Monism  finds  with  the  problem  of 
evil;  Dualism  is  always  and  absolutely  unable  to  endure  the 
strain  of  the  uprising  and  uplifting  reflection  and  religious 
experience  of  the  race.  The  conception  of  God  must,  then, 
he  modified  so  as  to  make  Him  his  own  justification,  of  his 
own  ways,  to  those  who  consent  to  take  the  attitude  of  filial 
piety  toward  Him.  This  altered  conception  is  not  that,  sim- 
ply, of  a  World-Ground  which  may  be  received  by  the  intel- 
lect as  an  Absolute  Person;  it  must  appeal  to  heart  and  good- 
will, as  well  to  the  intellect,  in  the  form  of  a  postulate  which 
affirms  the  perfection  of  the  Object  of  faith  as  Ethical  Spirit. 

For    the    individual    believer    the    problem    of    evil    is    now 


490  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

solved  by  his  changed  estimate  of  the  values  of  the  different 
goods,  and  by  his  faith  that  the  changed  attitude  in  which  he 
stands  toward  God  secures  for  him  the  supreme  and  all-in- 
clusive good.  This  attitude  is  a  voluntary,  ethical,  and  spiritual 
union  with  the  object  of  his  faith.  Indeed,  all  the  higher  re- 
ligions make  this  good,  which  in  the  estimate  of  a  mind  that 
can  see  truly,  outweighs  all  the  evils  of  life,  to  consist  in  some 
sort  of  communion  with  the  divine  beings.  Even  the  lower 
forms  of  religion  show  intimations  of  the  same  confidence. 
In  Greece,  to  dwell  with  the  gods  on  Olympus  was  the  highest 
wish  of  good  fortune  for  the  believer  after  his  death.  The 
supreme  desire  of  the  old-Vedic  rishis  was  to  be  united  with 
Agni,  Veruna,  or  Indra.  And  when  the  impersonal  principle 
Brahma  is  elevated  above  the  gods,  even  the  gods  themselves 
are  only  gateways  to  the  soul  that  longs  to  be  absorbed  in  the 
higher  good  of  a  union  with  Brahma.  But  above  all  does 
the  Christian  faith  convert  the  bearing  of  all  suffering  for 
the  individual  Self  into  a  loving  and  cheerful  submission  to 
the  will  of  God;  and  the  triumph  over  all  moral  evil,  however 
much  self-sacrifice  it  may  involve,  into  a  loving  divine  service. 
Thus  there  is  something  of  the  fine  Stoicism  about  it,  with 
which  the  crippled  slave  philosopher,  Epictetus,  referred  to  tho 
divine  dealing  with  him :  "  What  about  my  leg  being  lamed, 
then  ? "  "  Slave !  do  you  really  find  fault  with  the  world  on 
account  of  one  bit  of  a  leg?  Will  you  not  give  that  up  to  the 
Universe?  Will  you  not  let  it  go?  Will  you  not  gladly  sur- 
render it  to  the  Giver  ?  "  But  there  is  also  something  yet 
finer  in  the  way  that  religious  faith  answers,  for  the  individual 
believer,  the  dark  problem  of  evil.  As  seen  from  its  highest 
point  of  view,  the  minutest  details  of  the  life  of  the  pious  man 
are  under  the  merciful  and  loving  care  of  a  Heavenly  Father: 
and  suffering  is  only  a  filling-up  of  the  measure  which  has  been 
poured  so  full  already  by  all  the  true  sons  of  God. 

Thus,  also  for  a  humanity  that  has  the  fullness  of  tho  true 
faith,  God  is  so  conceived  of  as  to  be  his  own  Theodicy.    But  the 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  401 

question  recurs  as  to  the  basis  in  fact  upon  which  this  faith 
is  reposed;  and  as  to  the  rationality  of  the  faith  itself,  when 
taken  in  that  large  way  which  is  necessary  in  order  even  par- 
tially, to  compass  the  problem  of  the  World's  suffering  and 
moral  failure.  To  this  question  there  are  these  three  consid- 
erations to  be  advanced.  First,  and  now  most  important  of 
all,  the  appearance  and  growth  of  religious  experience  itself 
is  of  immense  value  in  support  of  the  claim  that  God  is  indeed 
perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  The  experience  is  a  fact.  It  is  one 
of  those  facts  of  an  abiding  and  rising  confidence  in  the  reality 
of  human  ideals,  which  constitute  the  most  significant  and  in- 
fluential factors  in  human  history.  The  grand  conceptions  of 
a  perfectly  good  God,  and  of  his  Kingdom,  are  with  the  race. 
Whence  did  they  come?  To  tabulate,  to  estimate  and  to  criti- 
cise, the  empirical  sources,  does  not  suffice  to  account  for  the 
conceptions  themselves.  The  experience  claims  to  be  about, 
or  of,  the  World-Ground;  its  ultimate  sources  must  be  sought 
and  found,  if  found  at  all,  in  the  reality  of  the  World-Ground. 
If  the  World-Ground  can  be  conceived  of  as  producing  so 
comforting  and  lofty  an  illusion,  then  it  is  surely  capable — 
given  time  enough — of  vindicating  its  own  character  and  of 
proving  that  the  faith  is  not  an  illusion,  but,  the  rather,  an 
insight  into  the  Reality  corresponding  to  its  own  Ideal.  Such 
testimony  from  religious  experience,  and  especially  from  the 
highest  religious  consciousness,  is  not  indeed  a  demonstration; 
but  it  is  of  essentially  the  same  nature  as  all  of  the  complex 
argument  by  which  we  are  compelled  to  establish  the  ration- 
ality of  man's  faith  in  God.  Only  this  particular  experience 
is  still  in  the  making,  as  it  were :  and  the  problem,  to  the 
better  solution  of  which  it  promises  its  contribution,  is  so 
deep,  and  high,  and  vast  in  extent,  and  so  dark,  that  a  few 
centuries  can  scarcely  be  expected  to  contribute  a  complete 
empirical  solution.  Have  all  the  countless  records  of  the 
countless  biological  ages  served  as  yet  fully  to  answer  the 
problems  of  biological  evolution? 


492  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

In  saying  this  we  touch  upon  the  second  of  the  more  im- 
portant suggested  considerations.  The  nearest  which  human 
reason  can  come  to  any  theoretical  solution  of  the  problem  of 
evil  must  be  found  in  a  doctrine  of  Becoming, — in  a  theory 
of  the  development  of  the  world  within  which,  man's  total 
experience  lies.  Such  a  theory  must  be  founded  upon  facts; 
and  the  facts  upon  which  it  is  founded,  if  it  is  to  have  any 
value  beyond  that  of  a  pleasant  dream  or  a  fanciful  hypothesis, 
must  be  facts  of  the  world's  actual  history.  Among  these  facts, 
however,  and  by  no  means  of  least  account  in  determining  the 
character  of  the  world's  evolution,  are  those  which  pertain  to 
the  religious  and  moral  history  of  mankind.  Christianity's 
doctrine  of  this  development  regards  it  all  as  somehow  falling 
under  the  divinely  ordered  scheme  of  redemption;  it  is  the 
history  of  the  coming  in  its  perfection  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  Christianity — like 
Bramanism,  Buddhism  and  Zoroastrianism,  in  this  respect 
—does  not  offer  itself  as  an  immediate  and  direct  cure  for  all 
the  evils  of  the  world.  Neither  does  it  promise  any  indirect 
but  final  cure  in  this  life  for  all  those  experiences  which  are 
esteemed  evil  by  man,  and  which  are  really  evil  from  the  point 
of  view  of  his  sentient  nature  and  desire  for  happiness.  Sal- 
vation offers  primarily  a  cure  for  man's  sinful  attitude  toward 
God,  and  for  its  evil  nature  and  consequences. 

The  reasonableness  and  hopefulness  of  this  offer  is  sup- 
ported by  two  tenets  of  faith,  in  which  all  the  greater  religions 
have  a  share,  but  which  Christianity  has  perfected  in  their 
more  elaborate  and  logically  consistent  form.  These  are  the 
doctrine  of  the  Future  Life  and  the  related  doctrine  of  the 
Social  Ideal.  In  general  the  religions  which  have,  partly 
through  other  considerations,  arrived  at  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality, have  felt  the  need  of  this  belief  in  order  to  maintain 
any  satisfactory  view  of  the  problem  of  evil.  "  Tlius,"  says 
D'Alviella,  "  most  peoples  have  sought  in  xloctrincs  of  a  future 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  493 

life  the  means  of  repairing  the  evils  and  injustices  of  the 
present."  It  is  Christianity,  however,  which  by  its  unfolding 
of  a  belief  of  Judaism  in  a  social  redemption  of  the  righteous 
and  the  faithful,  has  offered  for  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  evil  a  faith  in  the  progressive  and  finally  triumphant  King- 
dom of  God. 

It  should  be  noticed,  finally,  that  for  the  faith  of  religion, 
much  of  the  evil  of  the  world  can  scarcely  be  said  to  be 
evil  at  all.  Eeligion  itself  is,  indeed,  born  in  humanity  through 
the  travail  of  desire  to  get  rid  of  the  evil — both  the  evil  with- 
out and  the  evil  within.  As  the  development  of  religion  pro- 
ceeds, the  moral  purification  and  spiritual  insight  that  lead 
to  communion  with  God,  and  to  a  union  with  Him  which  we 
might  almost  say,  is  "  for  better  or  for  worse,"  become  the 
things  of  highest  worth  to  the  religious  mind.  This  longing 
for  deliverance  then  developes  that  despair  of  self-deliverance, 
or  of  other  deliverance  at  the  hand  of  man,  which  is,  on  its 
other  side,  the  longing  for  redemption.  The  great  and  final 
function  of  religion  is  the  ministry  to  this  yearning.  To  this, 
subjective  religion  holds  out  the  hope  of  vanquishing  the  evil. 
The  evil  of  suffering  is  to  be  overcome  by  piously  bearing  it 
as  an  expression  of  God's  will  under  the  conditions  of  living 
assigned  to  the  individual;  and  by  doing  what  can  wisely  be 
done  to  remove  it  from  others,  by  use  of  means  that  accord 
with  the  divine  righteousness.  The  evil  of  sin  is  to  be  van- 
quished by  availing  one's  self  of  the  divine  help,  and  by  help- 
ing others  to  escape;  in  a  word,  by  conforming  to  the  condi- 
tions set  by  God's  good  Will  for  the  establishment,  growth, 
and  final  triumph,  of  his  Kingdom  among  men. 

Let  us,  therefore,  be  content  at  present  to  put  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  evil  which  religion  offers,  in  hypothetical 
and  negative  form.  Unless  the  historical  evolution  of  the 
human  race,  as  a  part  of  the  World-All,  may  be  believed  to  be 
directed  toward,  and  to  be  secure  in,  the  final  triumph  of  that 
all-inclusive  Good,  which  all  the  other  great  religions  dimly 


494  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

foreshadow,  and  which  Christianity  denoniinates  ''  Eternal 
Life  in  the  Kingdom  of  God,"  there  is  no  possible  solution 
to  be  discovered  or  even  imagined  for  tliis  dark  problem.  The 
summation  of  what  is  called  "  earthly  good,"  were  it  possible, 
as  it  is  not,  that  it  should  be  attained  for  the  race  under  the 
fixed  conditions  of  its  earthly  environment,  would  not  abolish 
the  conflict  between  good  and  evil,  and  the  resulting  schism 
in  man's  soul.  The  hope  of  an  ideal  good,  that  is  spiritual 
and  collective,  is  held  out  by  religion.  The  faith  in  the  secur- 
ing of  this  good  as  the  fixed  purpose  of  God,  through  a  process 
of  development,  is  religion's  solution  of  the  problem  of  evil. 
Confirmations,  that  find  a  certain  broadening  basis  in  our 
experience  of  the  world,  are  accumulating  in  the  storehouses 
of  the  particular  sciences.  And  although  the  evidence  is  far 
from  being  theoretically  complete,  its  general  nature  is  similar 
to  that  upon  which  repose  the  most  important  postulates  of 
man's  intellectual  and  practical  life  and   development. 

The  difficulty  which  thought  and  imagination  have  in  har- 
monizing the  different  moral  attributes  when  in  action,  in  an 
ideal  way,  is  much  greater  in  the  case  of  a  so-called  Infinite 
and  Absolute  Person  than  in  the  case  of  any  finite  person. 
Concessions  must  be  made  to  unavoidable  ignorance,  if  any 
human  being  under  the  actual  conditions  of  his  physical  and 
social  environment,  with  the  best  of  intentions  and  the  most 
zealous  care,  fails  of  perfect  justice.  Perfection  of  wisdom  in 
the  choice  of  ends  and  means  is,  of  course,  impossible  for  any- 
finite  being.  In  human  society  the  salutary  purpose  to  punish 
wrong-doing  and  to  avenge  the  wronged  and  the  oppressed  is 
unavoidably  doomed  to  contend  with  the  honorable  impulse  to 
pity  and  to  forgive  the  wrong-doer.  Indeed,  it  is  by  no  means 
infrequently  true  that  the  better  the  man,  the  more  severe 
and  bitter  his  inner  conflict  between  opposing  virtuous  in- 
clinations; and  the  greater  the  chances  of  a  decision  that  can 
only  be  followed  with  a  species  of  moral  self-disapprobation 
and  regret.     Thus,  the  picture  of  moral   imperfection  in  its 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  495 

struggle  toward  an  unapproachable  moral  ideal,  can  easily  be 
understood  and  appreciated,  because  it  is  matter  of  actual 
experience.  But  how  shall  the  mind  of  men  present  to  thought 
or  imagination  the  perfection  of  these  contending  moral  at- 
tributes in  one  person  and  in  every  motive  and  act  of  that 
person  ?  This  is  indeed  a  problem  impossible  for  the  finite 
mind  definitely  to  solve. 

What  has  already  been  said,  however,  as  to  the  essential 
nature  of  the  virtues,  as  conceived  of  and  known  and  prac- 
ticed by  man,  and  of  the  moral  ideal,  affords  some  light  upon 
this  difficult  problem.  Moral  conduct,  essentially  considered, 
implies  just  such  a  variety  of  mental  attitudes  toward  other 
moral  beings  in  a  rational  correspondence  with  their  char- 
acter and  with  their  social  relations  to  us  and  to  one  another. 
Nor  is  there  any  one  virtue  which,  on  account  of  its  inherent 
pre-eminence,  is  entitled  to  overshadow — much  less  to  over- 
whelm— all  the  other  virtues.  The  perfection  of  moral  per- 
sonality would,  therefore,  require  a  steadfast  and  omnipotent 
Good-Will,  guided  by  omniscience,  absolutely  free  from  the 
limiting  conditions  of  space  and  time^  and  so  present  and 
operative  in  every  event  and  everywhere.  But  it  could  not  be 
expected — indeed,  it  would  seem  to  imply  an  absence  of  per- 
fection— that,  to  the  ignorant  and  imperfectly  informed  ob- 
server, all  the  deeds  of  such  a  Good-Will  should  appear  equally 
just  and  equally  kind,  or  equally  brave  and  equally  prudent, 
and  perfectly  loyal  to  truth,  etc.; — under  all  the  varying  cir- 
cumstances and  conditions  of  the  evolution  of  the  human  race 
in  this  its  corner  of  the  Universe.  Above  all  must  it  be  re- 
membered that  the  Divine  Ideal,  whether  conceived  of  in  terms 
suggested  by  man's  moral  and  sesthetical  experience  or  not, 
is  by  no  means  so  simple  an  affair  as  to  be  entirely  compre- 
hensible by  finite  intelligences. 

For  a  reason,  then,  which  seems  essential  to  the  very  con- 
stitution of  the  moral  ideal  of  perfection,  its  progressive 
realization   will   offer    many   insoluble   puzzles   to   those  most 


496  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

sympathetically  inclined  toward  a  full  faith  in  its  existence 
and  supremacy.  While  for  the  doubter  and  the  critic  no  con- 
vincing argument  to  support  such  a  faith  can  possibly  be  sup- 
plied. When,  then — as  so  constantly  happens, — the  question 
arises  and  weighs  heavily  upon  the  heart  of  man :  "  Shall  not 
the  judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right  ?  "  religious  faith  will  an- 
swer "Yes";  but  those  who  have  not  that  faith  will  still  re- 
main in  doubt  or  will  give  a  negative  answer.  For  it  is  only 
by  the  completed  process  of  self-realization  that  the  perfection 
of  Ethical  Spirit  can  demonstrate  itself  to  the  human  mind. 
To  complete  such  a  process  is  the  province  of  the  ages. 

The  attribute  of  "  holiness  "  as  applied  to  the  Divine  Being 
is  rather  a  ceremonial,  priestly,  or  theological,  than  a  dis- 
tinctly ethical  conception.  Neither  in  its  nature,  origin  or 
development,  is  it  the  precise  equivalent  of  the  perfect  justice 
and  goodness  of  God.  In  the  lower  forms  of  religion,  this 
conception  has  little  or  no  moral  quality  whatever.  It  arises 
in  the  vague  feeling  that  tlie  gods  appreciate  some  kind  of, 
at  least  physical  purification ;  and,  therefore,  that  the  wor- 
shipper is  more  likely  to  obtain  their  favor  if  he  undergoes 
some  kind  of  a  purifying  ceremony.  To  appear  somewhat 
"  cleaned  up  "  gives  one  a  better  chance  of  propitiating  the  in- 
visible spirits  who  influence  the  weal  and  woe  of  mankind. 
Even  in  the  greater  religions,  including  Judaism  and  Chris- 
tianity itself,  holiness  is  rarely  made  wholly  synonymous  with 
the  perfection  of  moral  purity.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  cer- 
tain of  the  more  modern,  and  still  existent  ideas  connected 
with  this  term,  are  inconsistent  with,  rather  than  contributory 
to,  the  faith  of  religion  in  a  God  who  is  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 
This  inconsistency  may  take  either  one  of  two  extremes.  It 
may  substitute  more  or  less  completely  the  conceptions  which 
are  cultivated  by  an  excessive  regard  for  the  ceremonial  and 
the  dogmatic  in  the  religious  life,  in  the  room  of  those  ideals 
which  are  most  valuable  from  the  points  of  view  held  by  moral 
sentiment   and   ethical   judgments.     Thus  the   Object   of  re- 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  497 

ligious  faith  is  made  to  be  a  holy  Being  by  his  own  superior 
regard  for  Himself  in  respect  of  the  way  in  which  he  is  ap- 
proached by  the  worshipper;  or  else  on  account  of  his  interest 
in  being  accurately  comprehended,  and  conceived  of  with  a 
logical  consistency.  Holiness  in  man,  as  a  requisite  for  the 
divine  favor,  then  becomes  a  process  of  purifying  the  life  with 
appropriate  ceremonial  observances  or  with  instruction  in  so- 
called  "  sound  doctrine." 

But  the  developments  of  the  conception  of  holiness  as  ap- 
plied to  God  have  had  an  even  yet  more  baleful  influence  as 
contributing  to  another  extreme  of  belief  and  practice.  This 
influence  has  induced  theology  to  make  of  God  a  Being  who 
must  be  conceived  of  as  embodying  ethical  attributes  in  a  way 
to  repel  and  confuse  the  most  cultivated  and  choicest  moral 
sentiments ;  and  to  contradict  the  most  "  well-convicted " 
moral  judgments  of  mankind.  Such  an  unfortunate  result 
may  be  achieved  either  by  over-emphasizing  the  divine  retribu- 
tive justice  at  the  expense  of  wisdom,  pity,  and  mercy;  or 
else  by  exalting  these  milder  attributes  in  such  manner  as  to 
rob  justice  of  its  moral  fibre  and  so  to  make  impossible  any 
satisfactory  theodicy. 

When,  however,  the  conception  of  holiness  is  itself  purified 
and  made  clear  of  its  quite  too  customary  ethical  and  aesthet- 
ical  imperfections,  it  becomes  harmonious  with  a  faith  in  the 
moral  perfection  of  God.  A  perfectly  holy  God  then  becomes 
a  perfectly  good  God; — that  is,  the  Ideal  of  personal,  moral 
perfection.  Then,  too,  the  motive  of  subjective  religion  for  the 
finite  spirit  becomes  the  exhortation :  "  Be  ye  holy  even  as  I 
am  holy " ;  or — more  simply  and  appealingly  said :  "  Be  ye 
therefore  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 
And  the  goal  of  the  religious  life,  as  the  chief  good  of  human- 
ity, becomes  the  attainment  of  a  perfect  moral  union  with  the 
Divine  Being. 

The  ethical  and  artistic  efforts  of  man  to  improve  his  con- 
ception of  Deity  constitute  the  most  important  and  interesting 


498  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

feature  of  the  history  of  his  evolution.  The  architectonic  of 
the  gods,  however,  has  been  a  matter  of  slow  development. 
Even  now  it  is  far  enough  from  perfection ; — whether  one  take, 
for  one's  point  of  observation,  the  ethical,  the  gesthetical,  or 
the  more  purely  practical,  position.  The  gods  of  ancient 
Egypt,  for  example,  were  conceived  of  with  a  most  excessive 
naturalism;  and  as  subject  to  all  manner  of  degrading  limita- 
tions and  lack  of  perfection.  They  suffer  from  hunger,  thirst, 
old  age,  disease,  fear,  and  sorrow.  They  perspire,  have  head- 
aches and  bleeding  at  the  nose.  Their  limbs  shake;  their  teeth 
chatter;  they  shriek  and  howl  with  pain;  they  are  not  immune 
as  against  either  snakes  or  fire.  Even  the  great  gods  of  the 
Egyptian  pantheon  cannot  perfect  themselves  by  throwing  of 
these  depressing  natural  burdens.  But  as  man's  ideal  of  per- 
sonality and  of  personal  relations,  as  viewed  from  ajsthetical 
and  ethical  points  of  view,  has  improved,  he  has  more  and 
more  idealized  the  objects  of  his  religious  belief  and  worship. 
In  the  other  greater  world-religions,  but  pre-eminently  in  the 
best  efforts  of  reflective  thought  to  interpret  the  experience 
which  Christianity  has  brought  into  the  world,  the  result  has 
been  the  framing  of  a  conception  of  an  Absolute  Person,  ^\ho 
shall  stand  in  the  Unity  of  his  Being  for  the  realization  of  all 
of  humanity's  ideals. 

There  must  be,  however,  a  complete  union  of  the  "  metaphys- 
ical predicates "  and  the  "  moral  attributes "  in  order  to  fill 
out  the  conception  of  the  perfection  of  the  Divine  Being.  This 
union  can  be  effected — whether  in  thought  or  in  actuality — 
only  as  it  exists  in  the  unity  of  a  personal  life.  In  answer 
to  the  demand  for  such  a  unity,  religious  faith  attempts  to 
blend  all  these  predicates  and  attributes  in  the  one  Ideal  of 
eternal,  omnipotent,  omnipresent,  and  omniscient.  Goodness 
personified.  In  a  word,  its  Object  is  conceived  of  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit.  But  in  the  mixed,  scientific,  philosophical, 
and  religious  development  of  man  there  has  been  a  constant 
tendency  for  two  lines  of  reasoning  upon  the  data  of  experi- 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  499 

ence  to  fall  apart;  and  so  to  prevent  or  to  impair  the  perfec- 
tion of  this  ideal.  To  state  the  case  in  a  somewhat  extreme 
way:  The  God  of  science  and  philosophy,  and  the  popular  God, 
have  often  been  at  war  with  each  other.  Philosophy,  in  fidel- 
ity to  the  data  furnished  by  the  positive  sciences,  has  evolved 
the  conception  of  an  Absolute  or  World-Ground.  In  this  con- 
ception the  attributes  of  eternity,  power,  absoluteness  as  re- 
spects limitations  of  time  and  space,  have  been  the  factors 
which  have  claimed  the  pre-eminence.  Thus  the  philosopher's 
God,  even  if  he  ceases  to  be  a  barren  abstraction  and  gains 
the  title  of  "  Supreme  Being,"  or  the  "  Power  which  the  Uni- 
verse manifests,"  is  not  so  personified  as  to  come  near  to  man, 
to  touch  his  heart,  and  to  influence  his  life  profoundly  on  its 
ethical  and  spiritual  side.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  more 
popular  conceptions  so  anthropomorphize  God  as  to  dissatisfy, 
if  not  to  shock  and  revolt,  the  more  permanent  demands  of  the 
scientific  and  rational  interpretation  of  human  experience  in 
its  highest,  most  dignified,  and  noblest  developments. 

Now  neither  of  these  lines  of  human  development,  or  of  the 
conceptions  for  which  they  stand,  can  be  safely  discredited 
or  left  out  of  our  total  account.  The  "  philosopher's  God  " 
cannot  be  dismissed  from  consideration  with  an  outcry  against 
its  metaphysical  origin  and  abstract  characteristics.  It  is  a 
constantly  recurrent  and  permanent  force  in  the  evolution  of 
the  religious  life  of  humanity.  It  represents  the  highest  flights 
of  human  reason  in  the  attempt  to  reach  the  lofty  altitude 
where  the  atmosphere  is  so  free  from  the  mists  of  ignorance, 
and  the  dust  of  superstition  and  passion,  that  the  purged  eye 
may  look  into  the  very  face  of  the  Infinite  One.  Nor  is  this 
true  of  the  mystical  speculations  of  India  or  of  later  Greece 
alone.  It  is  also  true  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  of  some  of  the 
Epistles  ascribed  to  Paul,  and  of  other  passages  in  the  New 
Testament.  And  the  history  of  the  first  four  centuries  of 
Christianity  shows  how,  on  a  basis  laid  in  part  by  Plato,  Aris- 
totle, and  the  Stoics,  the  Christian  view  rose  to  a  conception  of 


500  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

God,  not  only  as  the  Father  and  Eedeemer  of  men  and  the 
author  of  the  forms  and  qualities  of  things,  but  as  the  very 
Being,  Substance,  and  Eeason,  of  the  world  of  things  and  souls. 
"  The  cosmogony  of  Origen  was  a  theodicy  " :  and  Augustine's 
"  City  of  God "  is  a  treatise  on  cosmology.  The  Christian 
conception  of  the  Object  of  faith  can  no  more  be  made  in  the 
future  to  return  to  the  alleged  simplicity  and  freedom  from 
metaphysics  of  early  Christianity  than  the  existing  cosmos  can 
be  forced  back  into  the  mythical  egg  from  which  it  was 
brought  forth. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  God  who  dwells  ever  near  the  popular 
heart,  even  in  the  lower  forms  of  religious  development ;  he 
who  sits  by  the  fireside  and  guards  the  hearth,  who  presides 
over  the  boundaries  of  the  fields,  and  is  the  guardian  angel 
of  each  new-born  child;  he  who  makes  the  clouds  his  mes- 
sengers and  rides  upon  the  wings  of  the  wind;  he  who  springs 
to  life  before  us  in  every  fountain  and  whirls  by  the  frightened 
mariner  in  every  storm ; — He,  even  He,  represents  a  concep- 
tion that  cannot  be  denied  its  correlate  in  reality.  The  homely, 
domestic  divinity,  the  God  of  the  child  and  of  the  lowly  in  in- 
tellect and  in  life.  He  is  no  less  a  reality  than  is  the  philoso- 
pher's God.  But  we  must  reiterate  the  supreme  triumph  of 
man's  religious  development:  There  is  only  One  God;  and  He 
is  the  Alone  God. 

As  the  development  of  the  race  has  gone  forward,  the  greater 
religions,  and  especially  the  more  thoughtful  forms  of  Chris- 
tian teaching,  have  presented  in  a  more  harmonious  union  the 
different  factors  of  the  conception  which  appeal  to  the  various 
interests  of  humanity.  Thus  God  is  more  perfectly  known,  be- 
cause known  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit,  as  well  as  the  Infinite 
and  Absolute  One.  But  this  union  is  disturbed,  rather  than 
assisted,  when  there  arise  within  the  same  religion  two  con- 
ceptions of  God, — one  esoteric  and  one  popular;  and  when  two 
sets  of  doctrines  as  to  the  divine  relations  to  the  world  of  things 
and  selves  are  evolved.     In  its  efforts  to  perfect  the  concep- 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  501 

tion  of  Divine  Being,  Christian  dogma  has  centered  its  atten- 
tion chiefly  upon  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  sonship  of 
man; — that  is,  upon  the  relations  of  God  to  man  in  those  con- 
ditions of  weakness,  suffering,  and  temptation,  which  are  in- 
separable from  existence  in  the  world.  This  fact  has  made 
this  religion  of  inestimable  practical  value  for  the  comfort  and 
uplift  of  mankind.  But  when  even  these  truths  are  so  dis- 
torted as  to  obscure,  or  even  to  contradict  the  ideals  of  Divine 
Being  which  have  been  evolved  by  the  reflective  use  of  human 
reason,  in  its  highest  forms  of  functioning;  then  religion 
ceases  to  represent  the  perfection  of  God  in  the  most  effective 
way.  As  a  consequence,  science  and  philosophy  become  arrayed 
against  the  popular  religion;  and  the  latter  is  sternly  called 
upon  in  the  name  of  reason  to  improve  and  elevate  its  most 
fundamental  conceptions.  For  the  Eeality  corresponding  to 
all  man's  supremest  Ideals  must  be  found  by  religion  in  the 
perfection  of  the  Object  of  its  faith.  In  the  same  source  must 
also  be  found  the  pledge  of  the  progressive  realization  of  these 
ideals.     The  same  confidence  is  expressed  by  poetic  insight: — 

"All  we  have  willed,  or  hoped,  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist; 
Not  its  semblance  but  itself." 

From  the  highest  point  of  view  reached  by  religious  experi- 
ence when  reflectively  treated,  all  the  ideals  of  humanity  ap- 
pear, for  their  origin,  ground,  and  guaranty,  to  converge  in 
one  Ideal-Eeal.  This  Being  of  the  World  science  calls  by  vari- 
ous titles, — such  as  Nature  (natura  naturans),  or  the  one 
Force,  of  which  all  the  varied  forms  of  energy  are  species  or 
examples;  and  places  it  under  the  "reign  of  law,"  in  a  course 
of  evolution.  By  further  reflective  thought,  philosophy  arrives 
at  the  conclusion  that  the  essential  characteristics  of  this  same 
Being  of  the  World  can  only  be  expressed,  or  even  conceived  of, 
in  terms  of  self-conscious  and  rational  Personal  Life.  But 
religion  has  needs  that  science  and  philosophy,  apart  from 
the  further  reflective  treatment  which  the  latter  can  give  to 


503  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

religious  experience,  taken  in  the  large,  are  quite  unable  to 
satisfy.  Through  thousands  of  years  of  groping,  and  yet  at 
times  led  rapidly  forward  by  great  religious  teachers  or  by 
more  popular  movements,  humanity  has  employed  its  profound- 
est  thinking  and  loftiest  imagination  to  construct  a  satisfac- 
tory ideal  for  religious  faith.  In  this,  its  Object,  religion  finds 
something  much  more  than  science  and  philosophy  can  fur- 
nish as  respects  the  ability  to  meet  the  moral,  ffisthetieal,  and 
practical  needs  of  human  nature.  For  to  the  religious  con- 
sciousness the  Object  of  its  faith  appears  as  One  like  man, 
an  ethical  spirit, — but  immeasurably,  and  as  yet  incompre- 
hensibly superior  to  man,  a  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

The  objections  to  this  conception  of  the  Object  of  religious 
belief  and  adoration,  which  arise  on  various  empirical  grounds, 
still  persist, — if  in  vanishing  degree.  Neither  man's  physical 
environment,  nor  his  moral  and  spiritual  constitution,  nor 
his  social  relations  as  thus  far  evolved,  nor  his  demands  for  a 
speculative  harmony  and  unity  in  his  great  postulate,  comy 
pletely  correspond  to  his  belief  in  the  divine  perfection.  Faith 
is  troubled,  baffled,  forced  into  conflict  with  a  part'  of  its  own 
experience,  on  this  account.  But  faith  persists;  and  on  the 
whole,  as  it  seems  to  us,  it  can  scarcely  be  denied  that  both 
science  and  philosophy  are  in  the  way  of  more  firmly  justify- 
ing its  confidence  as  having  a  sure  grounxi  in  reality; — but 
more  particularly,  as  commending  it  for  its  practical  efficiency 
in  sustaining  the  life  of  conduct  under  tlie  conditions  in- 
flexibly set  by  man's  present  environment.  Not  all  the  ap- 
parent limitations  to  the  ethical  perfections  are  removed  as 
the  world-order  is  becoming  somewhat  better  known.  In  fact, 
this  knowledge  is  compelling  many  important  modifications  of 
what  so-called  "  ethical  perfection "  actually  is.  But  the  phi- 
losophy of  religion  welcomes  all  these  discoveries;  for  it  con- 
siders them  as  self-limitations;  and  it  is  ready  with  a  nobler, 
more  rational,  and  morally  more  effective,  conception  of  that 
absolute  Person,  who  in  wisdom,  love,  and  holiness,  thus  limits 


GOD  AS  ETHICAL  SPIRIT  503 

Himself.  Nor  will  the  popular  religious  belief  and  practice, 
in  the  long  run,  suffer  in  this  way :  for,  to  make  the  ideals  of 
humanity  more  rational  and  uplifting  can  never  turn  out 
otherwise  than  an  important  service  to  humanity.  The  prin- 
ciple concerned  may  be  stated  in  the  following  way:  Ahsoluie 
Will  could  not  he  Good-Will,  were  it  not  limited  by  a  self- 
imposed  deference  and  devotion  to  ethical  and  spiritual  ideals. 
And  finally,  a  study  of  actual  religious  experience  shows — 
whether  we  pursue  this  study  as  the  experience  manifests  it- 
self in  the  most  illustrious  individual  examples  or  in  the  larger 
way  in  the  history  of  the  race, — that  it  is  itself  the  most  con- 
vincing argument  for  its  own  faith.  The  most  valuable  prac- 
tical conclusions  are  made  sure  for  the  individual  who  has  em- 
braced the  faith,  and  who  is  living  according  to  the  life  which 
it  requires.  Tliese  conclusions  seem  also  to  be  vindicating, 
while  perpetually  correcting  and  improving  themselves,  as  the 
uplift  of  religion,  in  the  fuller  extent  and  perfection  of  its 
operation,  moulds  the  social  constitution  and  social  relations 
of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

GOD  AND  THE  WORLD 

What  has  sometimes  been  called  the  ultimate  and  most 
difficult  problem  of  philosophy  may  be  expressed  in  the  form 
of  this  question :  "  How  shall  the  mind  conceive  of  those  re- 
lations that  are  most  fundamental  and  permanent,  between 
God  and  the  World?"  Indeed,  the  very  use  of  the  word 
relations  in  such  a  connection  is  accustomed  to  arouse  a  violent 
protest  in  some  minds.  Nor  is  the  protest  wholly  without 
reason;  and  this  reason  may  be  introduced  in  the  following 
way:  For  although  the  discussions  of  the  later  chapters  have 
had  a  bearing  upon  this  problem,  without  further  explana- 
tions they  may  all  seem  only  to  have  made  it  more  difficult 
and  confused.  We  began  by  making  a  distinction  between 
the  world,  considered  as  a  vast  collection  of  individual  exist- 
ences (of  which  the  human  race  is  a  part)  that  are  observed 
to  be  mutually  interdependent  and  reciprocally  related  among 
themselves,  and  the  "  Being  of  the  World " — an  abstract 
conception — considered  as  First  Cause,  or  Ground,  of  this 
same  system  of  related  individual  beings.  The  particular  sci- 
ences are  seeking  to  discover  what  relations  exist  amongst 
the  individual  beings  in  time  and  in  space.  In  their  search 
they  arrive  at  the  conception  of  a  Nature  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual beings  are  all  included  and  which  will  serve  as  a  term 
to  designate  them  all.  Then  philosophy,  in  the  form  of  meta- 
physics, insists  that  this  Nature  shall  be  conceived  of,  as  it 
were,  ontologically, — that  is,  as  a  Unity  of  Reality.  It  fur- 
ther proceeds,  taking  counsel  with  the  various  aspects  of  hu- 
man experience,  to  endow  this  Being  of  the  World  with  a 
variety  of  personal  characteristics.     And,  finally,  religion,  ad- 

504. 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  505 

vancing  beyond  where  the  philosophy  of  ethics  and  esthetics 
ventures  to  go,  makes  out  of  this  Being  the  Object  of  its 
faith  and  worship,  by  conceiving  of  it  in  terms  of  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit.  What,  then,  can  be  meant  by  speaking  of 
God  and  the  World,  other  than  to  inquire  how  the  One  Reality, 
in  one  of  its  aspects,  stands  related  to  Itself,  as  considered  in 
another  of  its  aspects?  Still  further:  How  can  the  term  "  rela- 
tion "  be  properly  used  in  any  such  inquiry  ?  The  three  prin- 
cipal ways  of  responding  to  these  questions  are  atheism,  pan- 
theism, and  theism. 

As  to  the  use  of  the  word  relation,  or  its  equivalent  in  some 
form,  it  is  surely  unnecessary  to  traverse  again  the  ground 
already  so  thoroughly  covered.  Relation  is  the  one  universal 
category;  for  to  think  is  to  relate.  And  no  opinion  on  any 
subject  of  human  thought  can  be  expressed,  whether  affirma- 
tively or  negatively,  whether  completely  agnostic  or  rigidly 
dogmatic,  without  virtually  confessing  the  validity  for  human 
thinking  and  human  judgment  of  this  category.  Even  to  place 
two  nouns  in  connection  by  the  word  "  and  "  is  to  propose  a 
problem  in  relations.  The  mind  does  not  escape  from  the 
necessity  of  thinking  in  terms  of  relation,  whatever  the  value, 
and  however  negative  that  value,  which  it  attaches  to  the  two 
conceptions,  "God  and  the  World." 

We  wish  to  divest  the  term  Atheism  from  all  traces  of  op- 
probrium, either  ethical  or  theological.  In  its  twentieth-cen- 
tury form  it  is  customarily  either  agnosticism  or  materialism. 
These  latter  terms  also  we  are  not  inclined  to  use  in  the  way 
of  an  argumentum  ad  hominem.  If  the  former  of  the  two 
(agnosticism)  is  intended  simply  to  deny  that  demonstrative 
or  scientific  proof,  giving  ground  for  a  comprehensive  con- 
ception of  God  when  conceived  of  as  Absolute  Person  and  per- 
fect Ethical  Spirit,  has  been  as  yet  furnished;  then  there  is 
really  little  more  to  be  said  than  what  has  been  said  already. 
It  remains  only  to  recommend  a  further  review  of  the  consid- 
erations  already  advanced  for  the  validity  and  the  value  of 


506  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tenets  that  are  virtually,  but  in  large  measure  unconsciously, 
held  by  all  the  particular  sciences;  and  that  are  expanded  and 
confirnied  in  the  form  of  a  rational  postulate  by  the  moral, 
artistic,  and  religious  experience  of  the  human  race  in  its 
historical  evolution.  In  the  case  of  any  mind  to  which  all 
this  does  not  seem  to  afford  sufficient  evidence  for  an  intel- 
lectual assent  to,  and  a  practical  confidence  in,  the  postulate 
of  religion,  there  is  little  more  of  importance  to  be  said. 

If  the  attitude  toward  the  problem  of  "  Cfod  and  the 
World "  which  is  charged  with  materialism  means  simply  to 
assert  a  well-founded  confidence  in  that  view  of  so-called  Na- 
ture which  the  physical  and  natural  sciences  have  already  at- 
tained, we  are  far  enough  from  having  any  cpmrrel  with  it,  so 
far  as  it  goes.  But  it  has  already  been  shown  that  the  quali- 
ties of  spiritual  life  are  invarial)ly  met  witli  in  all  material 
existences,  and  in  all  physical  forces  and  relations.  Without 
some  measure  of  an  indwelling  spirit,  no  individual  Thing  can 
really  exist  or  actuaHy  perform  any  service  by  way  of  influenc- 
ing other  things;  or  by  co-operating  with  them  in  the  architec- 
tonic of  the  one  world.  A  fortiori,  then,  the  conception  of 
Nature  in  the  large  is,  essentially  considered,  just  nothing-  but 
an  inert  and  inoperative  omnium-gatherum,  unless  there  is 
recognition  made  of  an  indwelling,  self-ordering,  teleological 
Will  and  Mind. 

The  essential  truth  which  the  theistic  position  attempts  to 
embody  in  its  statement  of  the  fundamental  and  permanent 
relations  l:)ctween  God  and  the  world,  is  that  of  the  Divine  Im- 
manence. As  opposed  to  this  truth,  there  have  been,  and  still 
are,  certain  theological  tenets  which  are  as  essentially  non- 
theistic  in  their  conception  .  of  these  relations  as  are  any 
avowedly  atheistic  tenets.  This  fact  Professor  Flint  has  ex- 
pressed (Agnosticism,  p.  423)  in  the  following  somewhat 
startling  fashion :  "  The  two  forms  of  agnosticism  which  di- 
rectly refer  to  Hod  and  religion  are  the  theistic  and  the  anti- 
theistic,  the  religious  and  the   anti-religious."     This  so-called 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  507 

"  theistic  agnosticism  "  robs  the  actual  world  of  any  momently 
vital  relation  with  the  Divine  Being  by  separating  him  from 
the  actual  and  present  system  of  things  and  selves.  Pie  is, 
indeed ;  but  he  is  set  apart.  The  real  world  was  in  the  begin- 
ning made  by  Him;  but  he  endowed  it  once  for  all  with  all 
the  outfit  necessary  for  it  to  run  on  forever,  or  at  least  until 
it  shall  have  run  down.  Having  imparted  to  it  this  self-de- 
pendent and  self-included  existence,  the  Creator  left  his  cre- 
ation to  the  unchecked  dominion  of  its  own  forces,  under  its 
own  laws.  God  and  the  World  were,  then,  once  in  reality  re- 
lated ;  but  all  the  present-day  relations  of  tlie  individual  man 
are  exhausted  within  the  sphere  of  his  intercourse  with  finite 
things  and  finite  selves. 

This  extreme  of  complete  separation  between  God,  the  so- 
called  Creator,  and  the  World  which  is  man's  environment, 
physical  and  social,  at  the  present  time,  can  be  maintained 
neither  in  tlioory  nor  in  practice;  neither  on  grounds  of  re- 
flective thinking  nor  in  religious  experience.  The  barest  intel- 
lectual consistency  inclines  the  mind  to  do  away  entirely  with 
such  an  unnecessary  hypotbesis  of  an  absentee  God.  For 
cannot  a  system  of  existences,  which  is  now  getting  along  so 
well  without  any  Divinity  to  shape  its  ends,  given  time  enough, 
have  developed  this  ability  rather  than  have  been  endowed 
with  it  some  myriads  of  millions  of  years  ago?  And,  indeed, 
if  human  reason  has  now  no  pressing  need  of  the  Absolute 
and  Infinite  to  explain  the  dependent  and  the  finite;  or  of  a 
perfect  Etliical  Spirit  as  the  present  source  and  satisfaction 
of  its  moral,  artistic  and  religious  experiences;  why  confess 
to  such  a  need  at  all  ? 

If  now  we  exclude  from  our  consideration  the  various  forms 
of  atheism  and  agnosticism,  there  is  still  left  a  conception 
with  a  very  complex  and  variable  content,  which  has  been 
developed  by  human  thought  and  imagination  in  the  effort 
to  conceive  of  the  relations  existing  in  perpetuo  between  God 
and   the  World.     Pantheism,   says   Professor   Flint    (Antithe- 


508  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

istic  Theories,  p.  334)  "has  been  so  understood  as  to  include 
the  lowest  atheism  and  the  highest  theism — the  materialism 
of  Holbach  and  Biichner,  and  the  spiritualism  of  St.  Paul  and 
St.  John."    But,  then,  "  there  is  probably  no  pure  pantheism." 

Pantheism  has  its  origin  in  a  profound  and  even  deeply 
religious  view  of  the  world,  and  of  the  relations  which  its 
varied  finite  existences  and  transactions  sustain  to  the  Uni- 
verse of  which  they  are  only  parts  and  on  which  they  all  de- 
pend. The  feelings  which  contribute  to  excite  and  to  support 
the  pantheistic  view  are  vague,  but  legitimate  and  powerful; 
they  are  chiefly  these  two:  The  feeling  of  the  unity  of  the 
world,  both  of  things  and  of  selves,  and  the  feeling  of  the  mys- 
tery of  the  world.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  more  reflective 
forms  of  pantheism  arise  in  reaction  against  an  extreme  form 
of  dualism  (like  that,  for  example,  of  John  Stuart  Mill) 
which  posits  a  good  but  not  omnipotent  and  absolute  Deity 
in  only  a  limited  control  of  the  world ;  or,  the  rather,  in 
reactions  against  the  conceptions  of  a  Deism  that  aims  to 
banish  the  feeling  of  mystery  by  presenting  to  the  intellect 
precise  and  apparently  final  definitions  of  God  and  purely 
mechanical  conceptions  of  his  relation  to  the  world.  The  same 
reasons  account  for  the  fact  that  a  certain  form  pf  Theism, — 
for  example,  that  advocated  by  Schleiermacher,  who  reduced 
religion  itself  so  completely  to  a  vague  and  mystical  feeling 
of  dependence  upon  the  Unity  of  the  World — so  easily  becomes 
almost  or  quite  indistinguishable  from  certain  forms  of  pan- 
theism. 

The  fundamental  difference  between  the  theistic  and  the 
more  purely  pantheistic  positions  concern  the  work  of  reason 
in  representing  to  itself  the  nature  of  the  relations  which  exist, 
in  fact,  between  the  system  of  finite  things  and  selves  as 
known  by  the  particular  sciences  and  the  Object  of  religious 
faith; — that  is,  between  the  World  and  God.  As  applied  to 
the  religious  experience  of  man  tlie  question  becomes:  Does 
the  world,  conceived  of  as   a  totality,   account  for  the  origin 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  509 

and  development  of  self-conscious  and  self-determining  spir- 
its, who  pursue  an  ideal  of  a  spiritual  order  and  attribute  to 
it  a  supreme  worth ;  or  must  this  world  itself  be  conceived  of 
as  having  its  ground  and  the  law  and  goal  of  its  evolution,  in 
an  Absolute  Ethical  Spirit?  To  this  question.  Pantheism  re- 
plies by  a  theory  of  identification :  Theism  answers  with  the 
conception  of  dependent  manifestation,  supplemented  by  a 
theory  of  Divine  self-revelation. 

As  soon,  however,  as  pantheism  begins  to  explain  what  it 
means  by  identifying  the  World  and  God,  it  is  apt  to  intro- 
duce distinctions  which  profoundly  modify,  or  perhaps  com- 
pletely destroy,  its  own  doctrine  of  identification.  As  soon, 
on  the  other  hand,  as  the  theistic  conception  begins  to  en- 
large itself,  and  to  abandon  the  limitations  and  obvious  errors 
of  a  quite  untenable  dualism,  it  seems  compelled  to  modify, 
by  extending,  the  conception  of  "dependent  manifestation." 
Thus  certain  very  significant  approaches  of  the  two  views — 
the  pantheistic  and  the  theistic — are  certain  to  show  themselves 
in  all  their  conflicting  answers  to  the  difficult  problem:  How 
shall  the  relations  of  the  World  to  God  be  so  conceived  of  as, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  satisfy  the  postulates  and  conclusions  of 
science  and  philosophy,  and  on  the  other  hand,  do  justice  to 
the  convictions,  sentiments,  ideals,  and  practical  life  of  re- 
ligion ? 

In  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word,  all  identification  of  the 
World  and  God  is  atheistic.  The  world,  as  we  are  now  using 
the  word,  is  the  sum-total  of  existences,  physical  and  psy- 
chical, of  which  man  has  experience.  To  say  that  this  is  God, 
and  then  to  refuse  to  explain  either  subject,  predicate,  or 
copula, — that  is,  to  make  the  judgment  one  of  identification 
in  the  simplest  form  possible — is  equivalent  to  denying  the 
Being  of  God,  in  any  meaning  of  the  word  God  which  the 
religious  experience  can  tolerate,  or  of  which  the  teachings 
and  practical  life  of  religion  can  make  use.  Even  the  most 
ignorant   fetish-worshipper   or   the   worshipper   of    some    rela- 


510  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tively  insigniiicant  and  transitory  natural  phenomenon,  knows 
better  than  this.  The  fetish  or  phenomenon  is  never  wholly 
identified  with  what  he  worships.  For  he  knows  himself  as  a 
spirit;  and  he  at  least  dimly  knows  that  his  god  is  a  spirit, 
too. 

On  the  otlier  hand,  all  the  greater  religions,  as  they  develope 
advanced  monotheistic  views  under  the  influence  of  reflective 
thinking  and  of  the  various  forces  that  are  constantly  at  work 
to  produce  a  more  complete  unification  of  human  experience, 
feel  themselves  impelled  to  admit  certain  important  truths 
which  the  various  forms  of  pantheism  try  to  incorporate  into 
their  theories  of  identification.  The  very  predicates  and  at- 
tributes of  God,  as  a  philosophical  monotlieism  conceives  of 
Him,  are  dependent  for  their  meaning  and  validity  upon  the 
recognition  of  these  truths.  As  we  have  already  seen,  for  ex- 
ample; "God  is  omnipotent,"  can  mean  nothing  less  than 
that  there  is  no  form  of  energy,  physical  or  psychical,  that 
];as  not  its  source  and  ground  in  the  Divine  Power,  "  God  is 
omnipresent,"  can  mean  nothing  less  than  that  there  is  nowhere 
in  the  world,  where  God  is  not,  in  the  fullness  of  the  Divine 
Being;  all  wheres  are  equally  his  whereabouts;  there  is  for  Him 
no  here  nor  there,  which  is  exclusive  of  any  other  here  or 
there.  "  God  is  omniscient"  can  mean  nothing  else  than 
that  there  is  no'  existence  or  happening  outside  of  his  cog- 
nitive consciousness;  no  movement  or  change  in  any  thing, 
no  phase  of  any  animal  or  human  consciousness,  that  escapes 
liis  all  embracing  co-conscious  mind.  All  these  relations  of 
dependence,  and  all  the  manifestations  of  the  Divine  Being 
which  these  relations  are,  apply  to  the  whole  world.  Col- 
lectively and  individually — with  an  "  all  "  which  is  what  the 
logicians  are  accustomed  to  style  the  universal  and,  as  well, 
the  distributive  all — is  it  true  that  finite  beings  "  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being  "  in  God. 

The  philosophical  criticism  of  every  form  of  pantheism 
must,  therefore,  begin  its  work  with  an  examination  into  what 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  511 

is  really  meant  by  applying  the  conception  of  identification 
to  the  relations  of  the  World  and  God.  Such  an  examination 
takes  the  mind  back  to  a  problem  in  the  theory  of  knowledge; 
or  in  tlic  a[)plication  of  abstract  logical  categories  to  real 
beings  and  to  actual  events.  Logic  was  formerly  accustomed 
to  syndjolize  the  so-called  principle  of  identity,  as  it  was  sup- 
posed to  \inderlie  and  to  limit  in  a  perfectly  absolute  w^ay  all 
thinking  and  knowing,  by  the  abstract  formula:  A  is  A;  or 
A  =.1.  But,  as  we  have  already  seen  (p.  102f.)  this  formula, 
even  when  taken  as  a  mere  abstraction,  turns  out  not  to  be 
strictly  true.  A  in  the  place  of  sul)ject  to  any  sentence  cannot 
be  identical  with,  or  precisely  equal  to  A  in  the  place  of 
predicate.  Nor  can  any  conceivable  meaning  be  given  to  the 
copula — whether  this  copula  be  the  word  "  is  "  or  the  sign  =, 
unless  some  difference  be  recognized  between  the  two  terms 
w'hich  the  copula  unites.  The  much  profounder  logic  of  the 
modern  mathematics  has  therefore  come  to  affirm  that  no 
relations  can  be  stated,  as  relations  merely,  and  without  speci- 
fying or  defining  what  objects  are  thus  related;  and  that,  be- 
tween any  two  real  objects,  there  is  always  postulated  at  least 
one  relation  which  obtains  between  no  other  knowable  or  con- 
ceivable olijects.  We  cannot  even  say  "  I  am  I,"  without  im- 
plying an  important  difference  between  the  "  I  "  that  is  sub- 
ject and  the  "  I  "  that  it  predicates  of  itself ;  and  of  which  it 
somehow  affirms  an  essential  and  living  unity  with  itself.  For, 
to  be  really  sp//-identical  can  be  nothing  else  than  actually 
to  live  the  life  of  a  self-differentiating  and  self-identifying 
being.  And  one  moment  of  such  a  life  is  given  to  a  finite 
Self  whenever  it  knows  itself  as  self-conscious  and  self-de- 
termining. 

The  attempt,  therefore,  to  apply  the  category  of  identity 
to  the  Absolute  and  the  sum-total  of  cosmic  existences  and 
happenings  is  above  all  other  attempts  of  this  sort  illogical 
and  absurd.  And,  indeed,  this  is  never  what  pantheism,  when 
it  tries  to  take  its  terms  out  from  behind  the  misty  vail  of 


512  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

feeling  which  envelopes  them,  really  does.  The  World  which  it 
affirms  to  be  God  is  never  conceived  of,  in  all  its  terms,  pre- 
cisely  the  same  as  God.  The  affirmation,  when  strictly  inter- 
preted, turns  out  to  be  one  of  relations  and  not  of  a  strict 
identification.  And  the  relations  especially  apt  to  be  selected 
for  expounding  the  real  meaning  of  the  copula — is,  or  equals 
to — are  those  of  dependence  and  manifestation.  Otherwise  it 
would  be  quite  as  effective  to  say,  "  The  World  is  the  World  " ; 
or  "  God  is  the  World  " ;  or  to  say  "  God  is  God  " ;  as  to  say 
"  The  World  is  God."  To  identify  the  sum-total  of  existences 
and  events,  as  known  or  knowable  by  man,  with  the  Absolute 
or  World-Ground,  is  to  destroy  the  absoluteness  of  the  Abso- 
lute, by  making  it  dependent  wholly  upon  the  exercise  of  man's 
faculties  of  knowing.  Whereas,  to  regard  this  world,  and  all 
that  man  can  discover  about  or  know  of  it,  as  only  a  very 
partial  and  temporary  but  real,  dependent  manifestation  of 
God,  is  to  make  rational  and  consistent  the  beliefs  and  feel- 
ings which  are  appropriate  to  the  Divine  Absoluteness  and  In- 
finity. 

There  is  one  class  of  relations,  however,  to  which  the  cate- 
gory of  identity,  in  its  more  strictly  pantheistic  signification, 
has  absolutely  no  applicability  whatever.  Such  are  the  rela- 
tions which  arise  and  maintain  themselves  between  persons. 
But  religion,  whether  as  belief,  sentiment,  or  cult, — on  the 
side  of  man  at  least, — is  essentially  a  personal  affair.  Only 
a  being  which  has  developed  some  capacity  for  knowing  itself 
as  a  person,  and  for  entering  voluntarily  into  personal  and 
social  relations  with  other  beings,  can  be  religious.  Only  as 
this  same  being  attributes  to  cosmic  existences  the  qnasi-^ox- 
sonal  and  spiritual  qualities  which  he  recognizes  in  himself, 
does  he  regard  these  beings  as  objects  of  religious  belief  and 
worship.  But  personal  beings  cannot  be  unified.  As  long  as 
I  remain  I,  or  am  8e?f-identical  at  all,  I  cannot  wholly  iden- 
tify myself,  or  be  identified  by  others,  with  any  other  thing  or 
person.     This  power  of  self-identification,  with  its  reverse  or 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  513 

complementary  power  of  distinguishing  the  Self  from  others, 
may  indeed  be  lost;  but  when  it  is  lost,  the  Self  ceases,  either 
temporarily  or  permanently,  to  exist  at  all.  In  a  word,  the 
conception  of  two  persons,  identical  as  persons,  is  a  purely 
negative  conception ;  it  cannot  be  stated  in  terms  that  are  not 
self-contradictory.  Selves  cannot  he  identified  otherwise  than 
by  self-identification  and  self-differentiation.  Both  Panthe- 
ism and  Theism,  then,  are  forced  to  use  such  terms  as  com- 
munion or  union,  in  order  to  express  the  most  intimate  and 
valuable  relations  which  can  exist  between  finite  persons  and 
the  Divine  Being.  Or  if  such  terms  as  absorption  or  re-en- 
trance into  the  Divine  Being,  be  made  the  goal  of  pious  de- 
sire and  endeavor;  unless  these  terms  continue  to  bear  a  wholly 
inappropriate  and  purely  physical  signification,  they  cannot 
be  interpreted  as  any  species  of  identification.  To  say  that 
the  human  Self  becomes  at  death  so  absorbed  in  God  as  to 
return  to  the  condition  of  an  unconscious,  or  non-self-con- 
scious part  of  Divine  Being,  is  simply  to  deny  to  the  finite 
Self  a  continued  existence. 

When,  therefore,  the  conceptions  of  Pantheism  and  Theism 
are  examined,  in  order  to  discover  in  what  important  respects 
they  differ  concerning  the  relations  of  God  and  the  World,  it  is 
discovered  that  the  difl^erences  all  center  about  the  idea  of 
personality.  To  say  that  the  World,  is  God,  or  may  be  identi- 
fied with  God,  is  equivalent  to  affirming  that  the  sum-total 
of  cosmic  existences  and  processes  implies  for  its  explanation 
only  an  impersonal  Ground.  In  brief,  the  only  pantheism 
which  is  not  also  a-theism,  differs  from  theism,  in  failing  to 
rise  to  the  full-orbed  conception  of  the  personality  of  God. 
In  its  sight  the  Being  of  the  World  is,  indeed,  somehow  worthy 
of  the  mystical  and  worshipful  feelings,  and  even  of  the 
devoted  service,  which  is  due  to  a  Divine  Nature.  In  the  view 
of  pantheism,  however,  this  Being  is  degraded  by  the  attempt 
to  give  to  it  the  predicates  and  attributes  of  an  Absolute  Per- 
son. 


514  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

Yet  here  again  it  is  true  that  pantheism  has  many  shades 
of  meaning  and  degrees  of  approach  to  the  highest  thoughts 
of  theism.  It  often  also  has  the  figurative  and  flowery  way 
of  dealing  with  its  conception  of  the  world,  which  makes  it 
correspond  to  the  theory  of  mechanism  as  God.  In  this  way 
the  Divine  Being  of  the  World  may  come  to  be  identified  with 
all  the  cosmic  existences  and  processes  taken  together,  when 
conceived  of  after  the  analogy  of  a  personal  World-Soul,  or 
of  an  Idea  which  the  cosmic  processes  are  realizing,  or  of  a 
Universal  but  unconscious  Life  which  is  immanent  in  the 
phenomena.  The  God  which  the  World  really  is,  now  becomes 
thought  of  as  somehow  transcending — potentially  at  least — all 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe,  whether  considered  in  their 
temporal,  their  spatial,  or  their  more  especially  dynamic,  re- 
lations. But  this  view  brings  the  thought  hopefully  near  to 
the  theistic  position.  And  from  this  view  we  need  not  be  dis- 
turbed, and  cannot  be  dislodged,  by  being  told  that  God,  when 
"  qualified  by  his  relation  to  an  Other  is  distracted  finitude." 
We  may  even  admit  that  the  Absolute  is  not  "  merely  per- 
sonal"; until,  at  least,  the  term  personal  has  itself  been  in- 
terpreted in  a  higher  than  the  ordinary  sense. 

While,  then.  Theism  needs  constantly  to  incorporate  into 
itself  those  profound  considerations  which  are  emphasized  by 
the  more  spiritual  forms  of  the  pantheistic  theory,  and  to 
which  certain  religious  sentiments  of  the  highest  value 
promptly  and  naturally  respond,  it  cannot  loosen  its  grasp 
upon  the  conception  of  a  personal  God;  it  cannot  adapt  itself 
to  the  impersonal,  or  imperfectly  personal,  Deity  which  Pan- 
theism offers  in  its  stead.  To  do  this  is  to  dream  rather  than 
to  think;  the  dreamer,  if  he  continues  sane  and  logical,  is  sure 
to  awaken  from  his  dream  to  find  that  he  has  embraced  no 
more  reality  than  that  of  a  vanishing  cloud.  On  this  cardinal 
point  the  real  and  final  issue  between  Theism  and  Pantheism 
is  joined ;  the  ultimatum  is  stated,  upon  the  basis  of  which, 
if  at  all,  a  lasting  peace  can  be  secured.     A  final  choice  must 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  515 

be  made  between  the  ideal  of  self-conscious,  rational,  and 
Ethical  Spirit,  as  the  Ground  of  all  Keality,  and  all  the  many 
vague  conceptions  which  the  pantheistic  theory  has  to  oppose 
to  this  ideal. 

Further  in  favor  of  maintaining  a  firm  tenure  of  the  com- 
plete tbcistic  position  is  that  inevitable  vacillation  between 
atheism  and  the  extreme  of  mysticism  to  which  the  more  fer- 
vidly religious  forms  of  pantheism  are  constantly  liable. 
Spinoza,  for  example,  in  his  doctrine  of  God  as  universal  Sub- 
stance, or  of  a  natura  naturans  devoid  of  personal  qualities, 
was  correctly  judged  to  be  atheistic  by  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  the  last  chapter  of  his  Ethica,  how- 
ever, he  states  the  theory  of  the  Divine  Love  as  the  true  moral 
bond  and  real  union  of  all  souls,  in  a  manner  which  might  well 
seem  acceptable  to  the  Christian  mystics  of  all  ages  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

The  imperfect  or  erroneous  conception  of  personality,  which 
differences  the  pantheistic  from  the  theistic  notion  of  the 
Divine  Being,  becomes  particularly  obvious  in  the  conceptions 
regarding  man's  nature  and  relations  to  God.  By  pantheism 
the  personality  of  which  the  human  individual  is  capable  is 
not  conceived  of  in  its  true,  full,  and  highest  significance. 
This  defective  conception  is  expressed  in  various  figures  of 
speech  which  are  not  only  taken  from  physical  relations  but 
which  are  appropriate  only  to  things  and  to  the  relations  of 
things.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Hindu  doctrine,  in  its  more 
purely  pantheistic  form,  although  it  regards  man's  atman,  or 
soul,  as  some  sort  of  an  indestructible  entity,  represents  its  rela- 
tion to  the  Atman,  or  World-Soul,  as  that  of  a  portion  or  frag- 
ment to  the  whole.  Union  of  the  two  is  then  made  complete  by 
the  absorption  of  one  in  the  Other  to  the  loss  of  its  own  personal 
existence.  All  is  Atman ;  and  my  atman  is  part  of  the  imper- 
sonal All-Being;  which  may,  indeed,  as  properly  be  called 
Brahma  as  Atman.  The  Buddhistic  doctrine  of  the  non- 
reality  of  the  soul,  on  the  contrary,  destroys  the  personality 


516  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

of  man  in  another  way; — namely,  by  resolving  it  into  a  mere 
series  of  states,  having  moral  significance  indeed,  but  not  im- 
plying or  revealing  that  self-active,  self-personifying  power 
which  is  the  essence  of  even  finite  personality.  In  a  similar 
way,  the  modern  pantheism  of  Schopenhauer  and  his  follow- 
ers and  successors,  where  it  does  not  vacillate — as,  indeed,  it 
is  constantly  doing — between  the  theistic  and  the  strictly  pan- 
theistic relations  which  man  sustains,  for  his  origin,  contin- 
ued existence,  moral  welfare,  and  destiny,  toward  the  Absolute, 
is  equally  defective  and  confused. 

But  Theism,  while  it  regards  man,  like  all  other  finite  be- 
ings, as  a  dependent  product  of  Nature, — a  child  of  the  World, 
so  to  say,^also  places  him  in  other  and  quite  distinctly  differ- 
ent relations  than  those  which  things  and  animals  have,  to 
the  personal  Ethical  Spirit  who  is  the  .Object  of  religious 
faith  and  worship.  From  the  point  of  view  of  religion,  man 
is  "  God's  child  "  in  a  peculiar  sense ;  his  nature  is  the  incho- 
ate and  undeveloped  image  of  God,  as  a  self-determining  spirit ; 
and  therefore  God  and  man  may  come  into  more  definitely 
reciprocal  relations.  These  relations  it  is  the  end  of  religion  to 
establish  and  perfect.  Thus  man's  personality,  instead  of 
being  lost  in  the  impersonal  World-Ground,  may  be  saved 
and  raised  to  a  higher  potency  by  a  voluntary,  moral  union 
with  God,  the  perfection  of  Ethical  Spirit.  Reflective  think- 
ing, when  influenced  by  ethical,  sesthetical  and  more  purely 
religious  considerations,  although  not  departing  from  a  solid 
basis  of  approved  truths  of  science  and  history,  appreciates 
and  defends  this  supreme  good  for  humanity;  while  the  re- 
ligious life  aims  at  its  practical  attainment  by  the  individual 
and  by  the  race. 

The  debate  customarily  summed  up  in  the  term  "  Nature 
and  the  Supernatural "  offers,  in  the  main,  substantially  the 
same  problem  to  reflective  thinking  as  that  which  has  already 
been  repeatedly  discussed.  The  words  employed  in  this  term 
are  complex  and  abstract;  they  cover  conceptions  which  need 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  517 

analysis  and  the  making  of  distinctions,  before  any  theory 
defining  and  relating  the  two  can  even  be  proposed  with  a 
fair  show  of  reasons.  In  Kantian  terminology,  nature  is  the 
sum-total  of  known,  or  knowable,  "  phenomenal  realities,/' 
Since  we  do  not  believe  in  such  mythical  beings  as  "  phenom- 
enal realities,"  we  have  taken  the  term  as  it  is  accepted,  em- 
ployed for  purposes  of  research,  and  made  constantly  available, 
in  the  development  of  the  particular  sciences.  Nature  is,  then, 
the  sum-total  of  all  known  and  knowable  concrete  and  indi- 
vidual existences,  considered  as  forming  in  their  relations  some 
sort  of  a  system.  To  add  the  word  phenomenal  would  now 
mean  only  this;  that,  inasmuch  as  these  existences  are  known 
or  knowable,  they  are,  of  course,  perceivable,  or  imaginable, — 
that  is,  capable  of  appearing  to  us.  But  when  the  naive  meta- 
physics which  is  necessary  to  the  very  constitution  and  de- 
velopment of  all  human  knowledge  of  natural  objects,  is  sub- 
jected to  critical  reflection,  it  discloses  its  own  deeper  mean- 
ing. Such  conceptions  as  order,  force,  law,  and  evolutions- 
leading  as  they  do  to  the  assumption  of  some  kind  of  Unity  in 
Reality  that  shall  interpret  and  explain  the  reasons  for  such 
a  Nature  as  man  knows,  or  conceives  of — impel  the  mind  to 
adopt  the  belief  in  a  Something-more,  a  Super-Being,  of  the 
World. 

The  word  super-natural  suggests  primarily  a  spatial  relation. 
But  to  use  the  word  in  this  way  when  applied  to  the  World- 
Ground,  to  the  Absolute  Person,  of  philosophy,  or  to  the  Ob- 
ject of  religious  faith,  is  not  only  childish  but  intolerable  to 
reflective  thought.  Nature  and  the  supernatural  are  not  to  be 
thought  of  as  two  mutually  exclusive  spheres,  lying  either  one 
above  the  other,  or  side  by  side.  In  interpreting  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Supernatural,  however,  we  have  only  to  recall  how 
all  the  particular  sciences,  when  pressed  for  a  definition  of 
the  postulates  on  which  they  base  their  particular  explana- 
tions, are  obliged  to  confess  to  the  presence,  as  immanent  in 
nature,  of  a   Something-More.     Such   a  necessity   was   found 


518  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

to  be  true,  not  only  of  the  system  of  things  and  selves,  con- 
sidered as  a  self-contained  and  self-consistent  whole,  but  also 
of  each  particular  Thing  or  individual  Self.  In  the  restricted 
use  of  the  word  "  natural,"  and  in  a  confessedly  legitimate  use 
of  the  word  "  supernatural,"  there  is  no  need  of  conflict  be- 
tween the  two.  Were  there  not  something-more,  something 
super  or  supra,  something  over  and  above  (in  the  logical  and 
not  spatial  meaning  of  these  words),  in  every  natural  exist- 
ence and  in  Nature  as  a  whole,  no  particular  real  being  could 
exist  in,  or  could  belong  to,  this  natural  System  of  real  be- 
ings. Instead  of  the  two  terms — nature  and  supernatural — 
being  antithetic  and  mutually  exclusive,  therefore,  they  are 
supplementary;  and  both  conceptions  are  necessary  for  even 
making  any  approaches  to  an  explanation  that  shall  seem  full 
and  satisfactory.  Indeed,  the  particular  sciences  proceed  in  this 
way.  The  Thing  as  considered  by  chemistry  and  biology  is  not 
a  different  being,  in  reality,  from  the  same  Thing  as  considered 
by  physics  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  practical  uses  by 
man. 

Every  being  in  the  world,  as  this  world  is  empirically 
known,  must  therefore  have  its  nature  considered  from  an  in- 
definite number  of  points  of  view.  As  known  from  a  superior 
point  of  view,  its  whole  nature  often  appears  changed;  but 
the  change  is  not  one  which  opposes  its  new  nature  to  its 
old ;  its  superior  nature  does  not  conflict  with  or  do  away  with, 
its  inferior  nature.  The  one  Thing  really  has  these  different 
natures,  as  aspects  of  its  one  nature;  and  no  thing  is  so  poor 
as  not  to  share  in  this  infinite,  and  infinitely  complex,  wealth 
of  natures  rising  "above"  all  particular  natures;  and  all 
of  which  have  their  ground  in  the  all-comprehending  Nature. 
The  scientific  conception  of  what  is  properly  to  be  included 
under  the  term  natural  is,  indeed,  far  more  comprehensive  and 
rich  now  than  it  has  ever  been  before.  Just  on  this  very  ac- 
count it  is  claimed  that  the  natural  no  longer  needs  to  be 
supplemented   by  the   supernatural;   that,   indeed,  the  former 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  519 

positively  excludes  the  latter.  This  claim  could  be  justifiable 
only  on  two  conditions.  Of  these  conditions,  one  is  that  the 
conception  of  Nature  shall  "be  so  illogically  expanded  as  to 
include  those  points  of  view  which  belong  more  properly  to 
the  Supernatural ;  and  the-  other  is,  that  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural  shall  be  regarded  as  mutually  exclusive  spheres. 
But  it  has  been  agreed  to  limit  the  conception  of  the  natural 
to  that  system  of  existences  which  is  described  and  descrip- 
tively explained  by  the  positive  sciences.  And  this  very  system 
has  been  shown  to  have  a  Being  Supernatural  as  its  own  ex- 
planatory real  Principle,  of  which  natural  objects  and  events 
are  all  a  dependent  manifestation. 

More  emphatically  true  is  it  that  religion  cannot  dispense 
with  the  conception  of  the  Supernatural.  But  with  religion 
the  Supernatural  is  God, — not  more,  but  then  no  less.  Re- 
ligion cannot  afford  to  hold  this  conception  in  antagonism  to 
modern  science  and  philosophy.  According  to  its  larger  Ideal, 
then,  every  existence  and  every  event  is  capable  of  being  re- 
garded from  two  different  but  not  antithetic  points  of  view, 
as  both  natural  and  supernatural.  For  the  totality  of  human 
experience,  in  the  realm  of  scientific  endeavor,  and  in  the  realm 
of  ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious  beliefs,  sentiments,  and 
ideals,  demands  the  satisfaction  afforded  by  hoth  points  of 
view. 

In  further  interpretation  of  the  conception  connected  with 
the  term  Supernatural,  these  three  truths  should  be  borne  in 
mind:  First,  Nature,  as  known  or  know  able  by  man  is  not, 
and  never  can  be,  exhaustive  of  the  Supernatural.  Nature 
as  known,  or  conceivable,  is  finite;  God  is  infinite.  Nature, 
as  known  or  conceivable,  is  dependent  and  limited;  God  is 
absolute.  Man's  world  is  not,  and  never  can  become,  a  mani- 
festation of  all  that  God  really  is.  Second :  God  is  worthy 
to  be  called  the  Supernatural  One;  since  Absolute  Personality, 
and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  is,  ever  and  essentially,  over  and 
above  and  more  than,  the  sum-total  of  its  own  particular  mani- 


520  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

festations.  For,  third,  in  God  as  the  Supernatural  One,  as  Ab- 
solute \Yill  and  Eeason,  religion  finds  the  ultimate  source  and 
explanation  of  all  existences  and  all  events.  In  a  word,  it  is 
the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Person,  who  is  perfect  Ethical 
Spirit,  which  unites  and  harmonizes  the  two  otherwise  con- 
flicting conceptions  of  the  immanency  and  the  transcendency 
of  God. 

From  the  same  points  of  view  the  conceptions  of  God  as 
Absolute  Person  and  of  a  world  in  a  process  of  natural  evo- 
lution, become  more  easily  reconciled.  The  theological  ob- 
jections that  were  brought  against  all  theories  of  evolution, 
some  half-century  ago,  have  now — fortunately  for  both  science 
and  theology — largely  been  answered;  or  they  have  fallen  into 
desuetude.  The  characteristic  scientific  tenet  of  this  period  is 
Evolution.  But,  quite  as  truly  as  ever,  at  the  present  time  there 
are  two  forms  of  holding  all  such  theories,  that  stand  in  dis- 
tinctly difl^erent  relations  to  the  theistic  conception  of  the  world 
as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  God.  One  of  these  makes  the 
process  of  development,  as  observed,  imagined,  or  merely  con- 
jectured, altogether  self-explanatory.  It  posits  a  self-deter- 
mined (but  not  self-like)  evolution,  which  results  from  "  the 
self-generation  of  natural  law";  in  a  word,  it  substitutes  the 
conception  of  Mechanism  for  the  conception  of  Absolute  Per- 
son; it,  therefore,  leaves  the  Being  of  the  World  stripped  of 
any  characteristics  which  can  satisfy  man's  ethical,  asthetical 
or  religious  ideals.  It  is  essentially  metaphysical;  and  as  such, 
it  is  essentially  anti-theistic.  As  a  descriptive  history,  how- 
ever, and  so  long  as  it  remains  merely  scientific,  in  the  ac- 
cepted meaning  of  these  words,  the  theory  of  evolution  does 
not  move  along  the  same  levels  as  Theism.  It  may  easily  clash 
with  the  alleged  historical  statements  of  the  sacred  writings 
of  any  particular  religion,  or  with  its  traditions,  standard  con- 
ceptions, and  dogmas,  of  the  creation  type.  But  it  cannot, 
when  thus  confined  to  its  own  line  of  movement,  conflict  either 
with   the   fundamental   conceptions   of  religion   regaitling   the 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  521 

relations  of  the  World  and  God,  or  with  the  rational  and  duti- 
ful practice  of  the  religious  life.  For  the  philosophy  of  re- 
lifi^ion,  no  theory  of  evolution  can  he  anything  more  than  a  par- 
tial and  incomplete  descriptive  history  of  the  way  in  which 
God  has  been  and  still  is,  creating  the  World.  For  piety,  the 
picture  of  the  process,  which  the  modern  theory  of  evolution 
draws,  is  far  grander  and  more  provocative  of  the  a3sthetical 
sentiments  of  awe  and  mystery,  of  the  ethical  impressions  of 
wisdom,  patience,  and  reserve  of  power,  and  of  the  religious 
feelings  of  dependence,  gratitude,  and  ethical  love,  than  any 
of  the  traditions  or  stories  of  any  of  the  world's  sacred  writings 
have  ever  been.  However  much  these  traditions  and  stories 
fhay  in  the  past  have  ministered  to  a  child-like  faith,  they  can- 
not at  all  compete  with  the  modern  theory  of  evolution  in  their 
ministry  to  a  manly  and  mature  faith. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  to  give  even  a  quite  complete 
history  of  the  order  of  the  development  of  any  individual  or 
of  any  species  is  a  very  different  achievement  from  giving 
a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  real  causes  of  this  develop- 
ment. In  general  it  may  be  said  that  no  more  can  come  out  at 
the  end  than  has  been,  either  openly  or  secretly,  provided  for 
at  the  beginning.  But  the  barriers  which  are  met  by  the 
theory  in  its  effort  to  explain  any  individual  product  of  evo- 
lution, are  yet  higher  and  more  insuperable  when  the  proposal 
is  made  to  explain  in  terms  of  evolution  the  sum-total  of  all 
existences  and  all  events,  through  infinite  time  and  boundless 
space.  It  then  appears  evident  that  the  very  factors  which 
the  theory  claims  as  its  own  rightful  and  necessary  postulates, 
themselves  imply,  for  their  real  existence  and  effective  appli- 
cation to  the  task  of  world-building,  the  co-ordinating  influ- 
ence of  an  intelligent  Will.  Or,  the  rather,  these  factors  are 
themselves  only  so  many  different  aspects  of  the  manifested 
Power,  the  self-determining  Mind,  which  is  the  Ground  of  the 
World  as  it  is  known  in  human  experience.  Thus  the  same 
line  of  scientific  research  which  leads  to  the  theory  of  evolu- 


522  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

tion,  when  reflected  upon  and  understood  in  its  deeper  signifi- 
cance, leads  to  the  conclusion  of  the  philosophy  of  religion : 
Evolution  itself  cannot  even  he  conceived  of  except  in  con- 
nection with  the  postulate  of  some  Unitary  Being,  immanent 
in  the  evolutionary  process,  which  reveals  its  own  Nature  hy  the 
nature  of  the  Idea  which,  in  fact,  is  progressively  set  into 
reality  hy  the  process. 

Every  attempt,  however,  to  apply  the  conception  of  evolution 
to  the  Divine  Being,  when  more  closely  examined  and  thor- 
oughly thought  out,  is  seen  to  defeat  itself.  If  the  conception 
of  God  is  to  serve  as  an  explanatory  principle,  as  a  real 
"World-Ground,"  God  must  be  conceived  of  as  the  adequate 
First  Cause  of  this  world  as  we  actually  find  it.  But  the  Avorld, 
as  we  actually  find  it,  is  in  a  process  of  evolution.  Any  con- 
ception of  a  self-evolution  of  God,  therefore,  turns  out  to  be  a 
resort  to  the  lower  form  of  an  unconscious  and  impersonal 
IMechanism,  or  a  semi-personal  and  undeveloped  World-Soul, 
as  a  substitute  for  the  theistic  conception  of  God  as  Absolute 
Person  and  perfect  Ethical  Spirit. 

The  popular  conceptions  of  God's  relations  to  the  World,  as 
Creator,  Preserver,  and  Moral  Euler,  must  all  be  interpreted 
in  the  light  of  the  truths  which  have  already  been  sufficiently 
discussed.  In  the  lower  forms  of  religion,  natural  phenomena 
are  regarded  as  directly  produced  by  some  one  of  the  gods,  in 
furtherance  of  his  particular  purposes;  natural  o])jects  are 
looked  upon  as  either  the  works,  or  the  seats  and  hiding- 
places,  of  the  invisible,  and  divine  spirits ;  and  animals  and 
men  are  either  divine  themselves  or  are  descended  from  super- 
human ancestors.  But  even  in  some  of  these  lower  religions 
there  are  traces  of  a  belief  in  some  one  truly  "  creator  god," 
or  heavenly  power,  or  heavenly  father.  IModern  science  re- 
gards the  world  as  now  known  to  l)e  a  ceaseless  Becoming. 
But  this  conception  is  not  at  all  destructive  of,  or  even  in- 
jurious to,  the  religious  conception  of  God  as  creator  and  pre- 
server, so  long  as  this  ceaselessly  becoming  world  is  regarded 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  52.1 

as  a  ceaselessly  dependent  nuinifestaiion  of  the  Divine  Will 
and  the  Divine  IMind. 

The  conception  of  Moral  Enle  involves,  of  necessity,  more 
purely  and  expressly  personal  relations  hetween  God  and  the 
human  race.  But  the  Divine  moral  rule  is  not  to  be  thought 
of,  as  something  supernatural,  in  the  sense  of  being  conducted 
quite  apart  from  all  the  physical  and  social  conditions  of  man's 
environment  and  development  in  history.  On  the  contrary, 
the  so-called  Divine  Government  of  the  world  is  to  be  con- 
ceived of  as  immanent  and  operative  in  all  these  conditions. 
Through  nature  and  society  God  rules  the  world.  Or,  the 
rather,  the  influences  which  shape  man's  nature,  development, 
and  destiny,  as  effective  in  his  physical  and  social  environment, 
are  God's  government  of  man.  Such  a  view  by  no  means  ex- 
cludes the  conception,  so  choice  and  essential  to  the  highest 
religious  experience  and  to  the  most  consistent  and  effective 
life  of  piety,  of  God  as  the  Father  and  Eedeemer  of  mankind. 
These  figures  of  speech  taken, — as  all  human  language  when 
employed  to  express  the  more  purely  personal  relations  of  God 
and  man  must  be  taken — from  man's  relations  to  his  fellows, 
both  appeal  to,  and  cultivate  in  their  support,  a  large  amount 
of  trustworthy  experience.  But  to  deal  with  this  subject  crit- 
ically, and  in  accordance  with  the  methods  of  philosophical 
investigation  and  argument,  would  take  us  too  far  into  the 
fields  of  the  psychology  of  religion,  of  theology  and  of  re- 
ligious dogma. 

Similar  considerations  apply  to  the  religious  conceptions  of 
revelation  and  inspiration  as  viewed  from  the  point  of  stand- 
ing of  philosophy.  Their  legitimacy  in  any  sense  whatever 
depends  upon  the  conception  of  God  as  self-conscious,  self- 
determining  Ethical  Spirit.  Their  validit(y  can,  therefore, 
neither  be  denied  by  a  non-theistic  and  purely  mechanical 
conception  of  the  relations  of  God  to  the  world ;  nor  can  it 
be  restricted  and  confined  in  the  interests  of  some  particular 
department  of  truth,  some  single  branch  of  human  develop- 


524  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

inent,  or  some  one  form  of  religion  or  of  theological  dogma. 
God  is  the  Revealer  of  all  truth;  the  Inspirer  of  all  spiritual 
excellences.  And  always,  in  some  form  and  to  some  degree, 
when  the  reflective  thinking  of  the  "  men  of  revelation " — 
whether  in  science,  morals,  art,  or  religion, — considers  fairly 
and  developes  fruitfully  the  ontological  meaning  and  value  of 
these  ideals  of  humanity,  philosophy  gives  its  authorization 
to  the  conception  which  they  suggest  and  embody,  of  the  Being 
of  the  World.  That  which  the  race  experiences,  and  which 
tlie  positive  sciences  partially  reduce  to  formulas  that  state  the 
observed  relations  of  the  phenomena,  is  indeed  the  manifesta- 
tion to  finite  spirits,  in  a  process  of  historical  evolution,  of 
the  reality  of  Infinite  Spirit.  But  religion,  with  an  assured 
confidence  in  its  own  experience,  which  is  also  a  most  impor- 
tant form  of  the  evolution  of  humanity,  extends  its  ideals  on- 
ward beyond  the  place  where  art  and  morality  feel  obliged  to 
stop.  It  thus  affirms  its  conviction  that  this  very  process  of 
evolution  itself  must  be  regarded  as  the  manifestation  of  the 
divine  purpose  to  bring  humanity  into  a  blessed  state  of  ethical 
union  and  communion  with  that  perfect  Ethical  Spirit  whom 
religion  calls  God. 

With  regard  to  another  very  important  religious  doctrine, — 
namely,  the  immortality  of  the  individual, — philosophy  has 
only  one  decisive  consideration  to  propose,  in  addition  to  what 
has  been  already  said  (p.  244f.),  more  particularly  from  the 
psychological  point  of  view.  This  consideration  depends  upon 
the  conception  of  God  as  perfect  Ethical  Spirit.  It  implies  the 
moral  continuity  of  the  life  of  the  finite  personality;  and  also 
the  belief  that,  if  this  personality  survives  the  shock  of  death 
and  continues  its  self-conscious  and  self-determining  exist- 
once,  it  will  continue  to  be  under  the  moral  government  of 
Cod. 

Neither  science  nor  philosophy  is  at  present  able  to  pro- 
pose any  certain,  or  even  highly  probable,  solution  for  tho 
problem   of  the   future  destiny   of  the   race.    In   reality,   this 


GOD  AND  THE  WORLD  525 

problem,  too,  depends  for  its  solution  upon  tlio  will  of  the 
Divine  Being.  And  since  religion  conceives  of  God  as  perfect 
Ethical  Spirit,  it  looks  also  into  the  future  in  the  assurance 
of  faith,  that  society  will  finally  be  redeemed, — a  conception 
which  religion  olTers  to  thought  and  fmagination  in  the  form 
of  its  doctrine  of  the  Coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION 

Philosophy  aims  to  reach  a  point  of  view  from  which  all 
the  various  aspects,  and  indeed  the  entire  history,  of  human 
experience  shall  appear  as  forming  some  sort  of  a  Unity.  As 
a  speculation,  it  strives  after  a  synthesis  that  shall  seem  to 
harmonize  the  conflicting  thoughts  and  imaginings  to  Avhich 
human  life,  under  its  present  conditions,  unceasingly  gives 
rise.  As  a  so-called  "  science  of  the  sciences,"  it  would  gladly 
afford  a  sympathetic  and  authoritative  interpretation  to  each 
one  of  the  particular  sciences,  in  such  manner  as  to  satisfy 
and  confirm  them  all.  But  from  its  very  nature,  the  aims  and 
efforts  of  philosophy  are  destined  to  only  an  incomplete  ful- 
fillment. The  problems  of  human  life  and  of  physical  nature, 
as  they  appear  to  the  unscientific  mind,  are  sufficiently  com- 
plicated. But  all  the  researches  and  discoveries  of  the  posi- 
tive sciences  only  serve  to  disclose  even  more  perplexing  and 
profound  problems.  So  far,  however,  as  these  belong  within 
the  sphere  of  science,  strictly  so-called,  they  admit,  more  or 
less  freely,  of  the  application  to  their  solution  of  scientific 
methods.  These  are  the  methods  of  direct  observation  of 
facts  or  tlie  critical  examination  of  historical  evidence,  and  of 
generalization  on  the  basis  of  these  facts, — aided,  whenever  this 
is  applicable  to  the  subject,  by  mathematical  calculations,  and 
verified  or  corrected  by  experimental  demonstration.  Where 
science  ends,  and  philosophy  begins — although  it  must  be 
confessed  that  in  practice  no  clear  line  of  demarcation  is  uni- 
versally available — such  strictly  scientific  methods  cannot  be 
employed.  Critical  and  reflective  thinking  over  the  material 
provided  by  the  various  aspects  of  human  experience,  as  al- 

626 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  527 

ready  subjected  to  the  methods  of  the  positive  sciences,  is  the 
only  way  open  to  philosophy  for  carrying  on  its  efforts  at  a 
supreme  and  supremely  liarmonizing,  but  speculative  synthesis 
of  the  assumptions  and  generalizations  of  all  these  more  definite 
forms  of  human  knowledge.  At  the  best,  then,  pliilosophy  can 
only  aim  at  a  more  or  less  acceptable  arrangement  in  a  system, 
of  rational  opinions  respecting  the  ultimate  problems  afforded 
by  the  experience  of  man,  as  a  race. 

The  considerations  which  Justify  the  pursuit,  and  dignify 
the  office  of  philosophy  for  the  individual  and  for  the  culture 
and  satisfaction  of  mankind,  need  not  be  repeated  in  this 
place.  They  can  be  scorned  only  by  the  ignorant,  neglected 
only  by  the  flippant;  and  they  fail  of  being  appreciated  only 
by  those  who  have  no  adequate  views  of  the  meaning  of  Nature 
and  of  the  mystery  and  values  of  Human  Life.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  too,  philosophy  has  never  ceased  to  be  of  vital  interest 
and  compelling  charm  to  the  human  mind.  Nor  is  there  the 
slightest  danger  that  in  the  future  it  will  diminish  in  interest 
or  sacrifice  its  charm. 

But  the  devotees  of  philosophy  must  observe  two  conditions, 
if  they  wish  it  to  receive  its  deserts  under  its  own  name.  They 
must  neither  think  nor  teach  with  arrogance  and  conceit  of 
superior  and  conclusive  wisdom;  nor  must  they  imagine  by 
partial  views,  and  verbal  antics,  or  tricks  of  fancy,  to  satisfy 
fully  the  cravings  of  the  human  soul  for  truth  and  for  reality. 
It  is  well  also  to  remember  that  there  is  room  for  common- 
sense  even  in  the  very  midst  of  the  profoundest  thinking  and 
the  loftiest  speculations.  The  philosopher's  walk  may  be  under 
the  sky  and  in  the  open  air;  but  it  should  not  be  in  the  ring 
of  the  circus  or  of  the  menagerie.  The  philosopher's  chair 
may  be  placed  in  the  woods,  or  in  the  study,  or  on  the  aca- 
demic platform;  but  it  should  not  be  placed  on  the  theatrical 
stage,  or  in  the  cell  of  the  mad-house.  If  ever  there  was  an 
age  which  needed  sane,  methodical  thinking,  based  upon  a 
due  regard  for  the  claims  of  science,  history,  morals,  art,  and 


528  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

religion;  it  is  the  present  age.  That  the  verdict  of  the  future 
will  confirm  the  judgments  arrived  at  by  such  thinking  is  as 
sure  as  the  unity  of  reason,  through  all  time  and  under  all 
conditions,  can  make  anything  sure. 

When,  now,  we  come  to  consider  the  conclusions  of  philoso- 
phy with  regard  to  the  nature,  limitations,  and  guaranty,  of 
human  knowledge,  we  find  ground  for  neither  of  two  extremes. 
Man's  cognitive  powers,  actual  and  potential,  are  not  such  as 
to  justify  the  assumption  of  perfect  and  cock-sure  knowledge, 
■ — whether  of  any  simplest  truth  or  of  the  meanest  example  of 
nature's  products  and  performances.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  extreme  of  agnosticism,  or  of  the  sceptical  distrust  of 
knowledge,  as  concealed  under  such  terms  as  relative,  an- 
thropomorphic, etc.,  is  equally  unjustifiable.  That  there  is  no 
knowledge  for  man  but  human  knowledge,  and  that  such 
knowledge  is  essentially  conditioned  by  the  nature  of  the 
knowing  subject,  as  well  as  of  the  object  known,  would  seem  to 
be  a  truth  so  primitive  and  obvious  that  none  of  its  general 
corollaries  need  be  questioned  or  made  the  subjects  of  dispute. 
Inasmuch  as  all  cognitive  activity  implies  actual  relations  be- 
tween real  beings,  and  is  itself  an  activity  of  relating  on  the 
part  of  the  knower;  to  emphasize  the  relativity  of  all  knowl- 
edge in  the  interests  of  philosophical  agnosticism  or  scep- 
ticism is  a  mere  begging  of  the  question.  Moreover,  there  is 
only  one  conceivable  form  of  knowing  which  can  be  called 
absolute,  even  as  respects  the  way  in  which  the  relating  activ- 
ity involved  in  all  human  cognition  can  reach  its  highest  terms. 
This  is  the  development  of  knowledge  which  we  call  self-con- 
sciousness. But  this  form  of  knowledge,  at  its  highest  stage 
of  development  and  in  the  case  of  the  most  trustworthy  knower, 
is  an  "  absolute,"  or  assured  and  logically  indisputable  guar- 
anty of  only  the  present  existence,  in  the  present  phase  of 
mental  life,  of  the  knower  himself.  By  self-consciousness  at 
the  best,  I  only  know  that  I  am  here-and-now  existent  as 
thinking,  feeling,  acting  or  suffering,  in  a  certain  way.     And 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  529 

even  this  absolute  knowledge  is,  when  further  considered, 
found  to  be  like  all  other  knowledge,  an  achievement  imply- 
ing growth  that  is  behind  it  on  the  part  of  the  individual  and 
of  the  race.  This  growth,  like  all  mental  growth,  is  condi- 
tioned upon  innumerable  forgotten  experiences  and  uncon- 
scious influences;  and  it  is  all  shot  through  and  through  with 
unrecognized  and  unverifiable  assumptions  and  instinctive  or 
rational  faiths.  Such,  then,  is  the  acme,  the  supreme  achieve- 
ment, the  incontestable  conclusion,  of  human  cognitive  ex- 
perience. 

The  moment,  however,  that  the  uncritically  agnostic  or 
sceptical  attitude  is  assumed  toward  man's  cognitive  faculty 
and  achievements  in  general,  the  mind  is  doomed  either  to 
a  course  of  the  most  glaring  logical  inconsistency,  or  to  one 
in  the  pursuit  of  which,  with  the  effort  to  be  logically  con- 
sistent, it  lands  itself  in  the  hopelessly  absurd.  Such  are  the 
exactions  demanded  by  the  faith  which  reason  has  in  itself, 
whether  this  faith  have  respect  to  the  claims  of  science  in  its 
discoveries  of  fact  and  of  truth,  or  to  the  aspirations  of  mor- 
ality, art,  and  religion,  after  their  respective  ideals. 

In  their  critical  processes,  the  conclusions  of  the  Kantian 
criticism  are  as  self-contradictory  and  self-destructive  as  are 
those  of  any  other  form  of  philosophical  scepticism.  The  very 
description  of  the  cognitive  act  which  limits  it  to  phenomena 
is  psychologically  inadequate  and  false.  And  to  speak  of  the 
world  of  Things  and  Selves,  as  known  by  common  experience 
and  by  the  positive  sciences,  as  merely  the  intellect's  projec- 
tion, in  the  objective  form,  of  a  system  of  judgments  concern- 
ing "phenomenal  realities,"  is  to  misrepresent  the  nature  of 
the  cognitive  process  and  to  falsify  the  achievement  of  man's 
growing  knowledge  of  nature  and  of  himself.  For,  indeed, 
the  very  term  "phenomenal  realities,"  is  a  gross  misnomer. 
Phenomor.a  are  of  realities,  and  to  realities.  Knowledge  is, 
essentially  considpred,  such  an  actual  commerce  of  realities 
as  implies  kinship,  between  the  knowing  subject,  to  whom  the 


530  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

appearance  (or  "phenomenon^')  is,  and  the  object  known, 
from  which  the  appearance  comes.  Neither  can  these  two  be 
separated  in  the  act  of  knowledge,  in  any  such  manner  as  to 
make  it  possible  to  regard  the  one  as  only  the  temporary  prod- 
uct, or  modification,  of  the  other. 

The  study  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  cognitive  relation  also 
makes  clear  the  truth,  that  all  theories  of  an  unknown  and 
unknowable  "noumenal  reality,"  which  is  underneath  or  back 
of  botli  knowing  subject  and  object  known,  as  a  sort  of  sus- 
taining substance,  only  serve  to  provide  a  ghost-like  abstrac- 
tion which  is  not  needed;  and  which,  if  it  were  needed,  is 
not  fitted  to  describe  the  dynamic  relations  between  the  be- 
ings involved  in  every  act  of  knowledge. 

All  human  knowledge  is,  therefore,  of  necessity  not  only  a 
growth,  but  also  a  matter  of  degrees  as  respects  its  complete- 
ness and  its  certainty.  Moreover,  all  human  knowledge  rests 
on  certain  assumptions,  to  dispute  which  is  impossible;  upon 
certain  faiths  and  tendencies,  or  appetencies,  partly  of  a  bio- 
logical and  physiological,  and  partly  of  a  conscious  and  more 
distinctly  rational  kind.  It  is  all  relative,  imperfect,  more  or 
less  infringed  upon  by  uncertainties,  and  forever  limited  by 
the  constitution  of  the  Universe  as  related  to  the  constitution 
of  the  human  mind.  We  ourselves  are  really  much  richer  in 
content  than  we  can  know  ourselves  to  be.  And  there  is  noth- 
ing in  nature  so  poor  and  mean  as  not  to  be  possessed  of  a 
wealth,  as  yet  undiscovered  and  probably  forever  inappreciable 
by   the  human  mind. 

In  spite  of  these  limitations,  however,  the  learner  may  ap- 
proach the  problems  of  metaphysics  with  a  wise  measure  of 
confidence  and  no  small  stock  of  good  cheer.  And  since  meta- 
physics is  only  another  term  for  man's  crude  or  thoroughly 
reflected  notions  as  to  what  he  means  by  calling  himself  and 
others,  both  things  and  selves,  real;  and  by  distinguishing 
between  actual  events  and  relations  and  those  whicli  are  only 
conjectured  or  imagined ;  all  men  are  compelled  to  be  either 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  531 

unconsciously  or  designedly  metaphysical.  Philosophy  aims 
only  at  a  truer,  more  profound,  more  critical  and  systematic 
theory  of  reality,  than  is  either  current  in  the  popular  mind, 
or  is  espoused  and  cultivated  by  the  positive  sciences.  The 
first  thing  to  be  noticed  in  pursuit  of  this  aim  is  this:  When 
considered  from  the  psychological  point  of  view,  all  objects  of 
human  knowledge,  in  the  very  act  or  process  of  becoming 
known,  are  more  or  less  definitively  personified.  Things 
known  by  the  Self  are  made  more  or  less  self-like.  They  are 
known  as  dynamically  related  to  the  knower,  and  as  actively 
and  passively  related  to  one  another.  They  stand  in  relations 
of  space;  occupying — each  one — so  much  room,  and  attracting 
to  itself,  or  repelling  from  itself,  the  others  of  like  or  unlike 
natures  or  affinities.  Translated  into  the  only  terms  of  human 
experience  which  can  give  real  meaning  to  such  abstractions: 
— Things  have  significance  for  Selves,  only  as  they  appear  to 
be  Avills,  that  resist,  or  oppose,  or  yield  with  more  or  less 
of  effort  on  our  part,  to  our  wills;  and  that  do  this  in 
accordance  with  more  or  less,  to  us,  intelligible  ideas.  How 
far  things  do  all  this  in  the  pursuit  of  conscious  ideas  of  their 
own,  we  are  increasingly  puzzled  to  say.  About  some  of  them, 
which  give  to  us  satisfactory  signs  of  being  like  what  we  come 
to  know  ourselves  to  be — namely,  self-conscious  and  self-deter- 
mining minds — we  have  no  doubt.  They  are  our  true  fellows, 
the  completed  (  ?)  selves,  which  we  know  ourselves  to  have 
become.  The  convincing  signs  of  common  bodily  structure, 
common  instincts,  impulses,  desires,  and  mental  habits  and 
mental  development,  are  crowned  by  the  unmistakable  sign  of 
articulate  and  logically  constructed  language.  As  to  the  other 
animals  besides  man,  there  is  still,  and  perhaps  always  will 
remain,  a  considerable  measure  of  doubt.  From  some  points 
of  view,  they  may  be  considered  to  be  mere  machines;  from 
others,  it  is  easy  for  primitive  or  ignorant  man  to  look  upon 
them  as  gods.  Comparative  psychology  and  biology  are  slowly 
finding  their  way  to  the   truth  which  lies  between  the  two. 


532  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

But  down  below  these  organisms,  lies  the  mystery  of  the  self- 
like nature  and  behavior  of  such  things  as  the  bacteria,  the 
white  blood-coTpnscles,  the  living  cells,  the  crystals,  the  mole- 
cules, the  atoms,  the  ions;  as  well  as  of  the  planets  or  the  so- 
called  fixed  stars.  All  these,  if  known  at  all,  must  be  an- 
thropomorphically  known;  that  is,  they  must  be  known  as  more 
or  less  self-like  in  nature  and  behavior.  But  the  mystery  as 
to  how  far  they  know  themselves,  or  determine  themselves,  in 
this  way,  remains  either  wholly  unsolved,  or  else  a  matter 
chiefly  of  quite   uncertain  conjecture. 

But  no  Thing,  and  no  Self,  can  be  known  as  apart  from  the 
world  of  Nature  whose  child  it  is,  and  in  which  it  "  lives  and 
moves  and  has  its  being."  And  all  the  positive  sciences,  as  in- 
corporating the  growing  experience  and  deepening  convictions 
of  the  race,  teach  the  comprehensive  truth  that  this  Nature 
is  some  sort  of  a  Unity  of  Eeality.  It  reaUy  is  such  a  Unity; 
it  is  not  merely  Tnade  to  appear  to  be,  in  orderly  and  sys- 
tematic form,  by  the  creation  or  compulsion  of  man  intel- 
lectual ])OM'ers.  The  monstrous  theory  that  man's  intellect 
creates,  rather  than  apprehends  and  appreciates,  the  oneness 
of  the  world  by  which  he  is  environed,  whether  in  the  form 
given  to  it  by  Kant,  or  by  Schopenhauer,  or  by  the  doctrine  of 
Maya,  is  intolerable  both  io  common-sense  and  to  the  modern, 
positive  sciences.  But  what  all  these  philosophies  have  in- 
sisted upon — namely,  that  the  conception  of  Nature,  in  its 
collective  form,  is  anthropomorphic,  cannot  possibly  be  de- 
nied. A  fortiori,  then,  it  follows  that  this  conception  involves 
the  postulate  of  a  Universal  Will,  controlling  the  particular 
existences  in  time  and  space,  in  accordance  with  immanent 
ideas.  This  is  what  must  really  be  meant  by  all  talk  of  Caus- 
ation, Order,  Law  and  Evolution, — conceptions  without  which, 
in  their  metaphysical  import,  the  positive  sciences  cannot  ad- 
vance a  single  step  as  explanatory  of  actual  existences  and 
events,  in  a  System  that  claims  Eeality  for  its  own.  Without 
these  conceptions,  all  tlie  sciences  are  mere  Scliein, — fancies. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  533 

ghosts  of  abstractions,  dreams,  myths.  But  all  this  amounts 
to  saying  that  the  Being  of  the  World,  as  represented  by  this 
conception  of  Nature,  so  far  as  known  by  man  at  all,  is  known 
as  a  Being  of  self-like  characteristics. 

When  the  metaphysical  eye  is  again  turned  inward,  and  the 
ontological  consciousness  emerges  from  its  stage  of  naivete 
and  becomes  self-conscious,  then  the  Self  becomes  aware  of 
the  meaning  and  the  value  of  its  own  reality  and  of  its  own 
real  place  in  the  system  of  realities.  It  knows  itself,  by  a 
process  of  development  such  as  characterizes  all  human  knowl- 
edge, and  with  varying  degrees  of  fullness  and  accuracy,  as, 
essentially  considered,  a  self-conscious  and  self -determining 
Mind.  It  does  not  need  "  to  go  behind  the  returns  "  for  this 
information.  It  discovers  with  certainty  that  it  has  been 
chosen  by  a  decree  of  all-comprehending  Nature  for  this  high 
estate.  What  more  effective  way  of  showing  appreciation  and 
gratitude  than  by  paying  Nature  back  in  her  own  coin  of  pure 
gold  ?  Nature  herself,  in  order  to  be  worthy  and  competent 
for  all  this,  must  be  conceived  of  as  self-conscious  and  self- 
determining  Mind.  The  larger,  and  the  largest  conceivable, 
possession  of  will,  reason,  and  self-sufficiency,  is  allotted  to 
tliat  Universal  Being  which  is  regarded  as  the  source  and  con- 
troller of  all  particular,  related  beings,,  in  all  spaces  and  all 
times. 

This  extreme  of  anthropomorphism,  if  you  will,  is  indeed 
not  a  naive  and  natural  product  of  the  untutored  mind.  It 
is,  the  rather,  the  achievement  of  the  prolonged  andj  highest 
development  of  the  reflective  thinking  of  the  race.  But  it 
interprets  to  the  "  plain  man  "  the  fuller  meaning  of  his  as- 
sumptions, conjectures,  and  practical  concerns  with  Nature; 
and  it  explains  to  the  positive  sciences  the  more  real  and 
deeper  significance  of  both  their  ontological  assumptions  and 
their  acquired  principles.  In  a  word,  by  reading  external 
nature  in  the  light  of  the  revealed  reality  of  the  nature  of  the 
Self,  philosophy  substitutes  the  relatively  clear,  although  frag- 


534  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

mentary  and  imperfect  conception  of  an  Absolute  Person — 
an  infinite,  self-dependent,  self-conscious  and  self -determin- 
ing Mind — for  the  vague  and  wholly  abstract  conception  of  a 
Nature  of  things  and  selves,  to  be  taken  in  the  large  without 
further  definition. 

But  man  is  by  no  means  all  matter-of-fact,  devoted  to  se- 
curing the  supply  of  his  material  wants  and  the  satisfaction  of 
his  intellectual  interests.  Man  is  also  an  idealist, — and  this, 
in  several  somewhat  different  ways.  His  idealism  is  also 
matter-of-fact;  and  in  all  the  history  of  the  race,  it  has  been 
most  important  and  influential  matter-of-fact.  Nowhere  in 
space  or  time  do  we  find  human  beings  who  have  lived  and 
acted  without  influence  from  moral,  artistic,  and  religious 
ideals.  Indeed,  without  the  impulse  from  these  ideals,  and 
the  advances  made  through  the  actual  pursuit  of  them,  no 
real  uplift  of  the  race  could  ever  have  taken  place.  To  prefer 
some  kinds  of  inner  states  to  other  kinds,  and  some  classes 
of  deeds  done  to  other  classes  of  deeds, — in  a  word,  to  make 
distinctions  in  the  values  of  conduct  and  character, — is  to  be 
human.  To  admire  some  objects,  whether  found  in  nature  or 
made  by  man,  rather  than  other  objects,  because  the  former 
speaks  a  language  of  joy  and  consolation  to  the  soul,  as  the 
latter  do  not,  is  also  to  be  human.  And  so  far  as  we  are  will- 
ing to  abide  by  the  testimony  of  historical  fact,  rather  than 
accept  the  unverified  conjectures  of  pseudo-science  (whether 
it  takes  the  form  of  anthropology  or  sociology),  we  no- 
where find  human  beings  who  do  not  believe  in  and  worship 
invisible  and  superhuman  spirits,  under  the  impulse  to  secure 
their  own  weal  or  avoid  somewhat  of  impending  woe. 

But  man  steadily  refuses  to  believe  that  he  has  created  these 
ideals  wholly  without  any  warrant  in  the  larger  Nature  which 
begat  and  encompasses  his  own  nature.  He  will  have  it  that 
the  invisible,  superhuman  spirits,  who  in  large  measure  con- 
trol human  destiny,  themselves  approve  or  disapprove  of  him 
and  his  doings,  on   grounds   which   correspond   more   or   less 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  535 

perfectly  to  the  ethical  sentiments  and  judgments  which  he 
cherishes  as  his  own.  In  the  case  even  of  those  men  who  pro- 
fess no  belief  in  such  spiritual  agencies  as  noting,  or  affect- 
ing, the  conduct  of  man,  the  conception  of  Nature  is  almost 
sure  to  be  endowed  with  more  or  less  open  or  concealed,  but 
genuinely  ethical  attributes.  Or  perhaps,  some  special  part 
of  the  World-All,  called  Heaven,  or  Fate,  or  a  "  Power-not- 
ourselves,"  is  treated  as  a  moral  being.  But  the  ideal  of 
monotheistic  religion  personifies  boldly  this  Being  of  the 
World  in  terms  of  the  perfection  of  Ethical  Spirit.  What  is 
true  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  race  is  also  true,  mak- 
ing the  appropriate  changes  in  verbal  expression,  of  its  aes- 
thetical  consciousness.  Nature  is  really  beautiful.  Her  prod- 
ucts are  worthy  of  sesthetical  admiration.  The  being,  called 
man,  who  appreciates  and  enjoys  these  objects,  and  who  feels 
the  impulse  within  him  to  produce  by  his  own  brain  and  hand 
something  which  shall  share  with  nature  its  valuable  artistic 
creative  skill,  is  Nature's  child. 

The  summing-up  of  all  the  highest  ideals  of  beauty,  espe- 
cially in  those  forms  which  excite  the  sentiments  of  sublimity, 
mystery,  awe,  and  the  tragic  passions  and  other  experiences, 
is  the  Universe  itself.  Toward  the  Being  of  the  World,  there- 
fore, man  feels  himself  compelled  to  take  the  supremely  aes- 
thetical  attitude,  both  of  sentiment,  and  of  judgment.  Its 
awful  catastrophes,  its  seemingly  merciless  destruction  of  its 
own  choicest  works,  including  its  own  spiritual  children,  do 
not  lessen,  but  the  rather  greaten,  this  kind  of  aesthetical  at- 
titude. And  when  Nature  heals  again  the  frightful  wounds 
she  has  made,  and  with  smiles  endures  the  travail  of  produc- 
ing from  her  own  bosom  higher  races,  or  better  species  and 
specimens  of  the  same  race,  the  human  soul  is  in  turn  con- 
quered by  the  obverse  forms  of  this  aesthetical  admiration. 

It  is  with  no  concession  to  fanaticism,  or  unnecessary  mysti- 
fying, and  with  no  respect  or  tolerance  for  cant — religious 
or   otherwise — that   we   have   used   such   terms    as   spirit   and 


536  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

spiritual,  as  attributed  to  nature  in  the  large.  But  fanaticism 
and  cant  ought  not  to  avail  to  abolish  such  terms  as  these. 
To  become  a  self-conscious  and  self-determining  mind,  under 
the  influence  of  ethical  and  aesthetical  sentiments  and  ideals, 
is  to  attain  the  reality  of  a  spiritual  existence,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  a  spiritual  development.  In  the  definition  of  values 
there  is  no  higher  conception  possible  than  this;  in  the  king- 
dom of  values,  its  realization  is  the  supreme  goal  of  human 
endeavor.  To  be  a  true  and  valid  person,  this  is  the  type 
which,  progressively  and  with  nearer  or  more  distant  ap- 
proaches to  perfection,  must  be  realized. 

Now  it  is  not  by  intellectual  cultivation  and  achievement 
solely,  or  through  the  progress  of  the  positive  sciences  alone, 
that  the  truth  about  the  Being  of  the  World  is  to  be  appre- 
hended and,  being  truly  apprehended,  appropriated  in  such 
manner  as  to  realize  the  supreme  values  of  human  life  and 
human  development.  Even  the  positive  sciences,  when  culti- 
vated in  the  most  "  coldly  intellectual  "  manner  possible,  re- 
veal the  presence  of  the  spiritual  in  the  material,  of  the  self- 
like in  things,  of  the  personal  in  nature,  of  Spirit  in  Matter,, 
of  God  immanent  in,  and  yet  the  transcendent  First  Principle 
of,  the  World.  They  are,  however,  accustomed  to  wink  at  all 
this,  and  to  pass  it  by  on  the  other  side.  And,  so  far  as  they 
conform  to  the  claim  to  be  engaged  in  discovering  facts, 
classifying  them,  and  arranging  them  in  orderly  sequences 
under  the  categories  of  causation  and  time,  this  course  is  per- 
fectly justifiable.  But  no  man,  by  becoming  a  so-called  sci- 
entist, ceases  to  be  human;  and  the  chances  are  that  he  is 
also  bound  to  feel  the  more  positively  the  call  to  become  also 
something  of  a  philosopher.  As  human,  he  is  a  moralist,  an 
artist,,  and  a  religious  being.  And  if  he  carries  his  philosoph- 
ical instincts  and  impulses  far  in  the  direction  of  an  attempt 
at  unifying  experience  on  its  many  sides  by  some  sort  of  a 
speculative  synthesis,  he  is  compelled  to  take  the  doctrine  of 
values  largely  mto  the  account  in  forming  his  conception  of 
the  Universe  whose  child,  among  other  children,  he  himself  is. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  537 

But  man's  conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World  must  at- 
tain to  some  kind  of  unity.  We  cannot  tolerate  the  thought 
of  two  Universes,  to  be  kept  forever  and  essentially  considered, 
apart ;  one  a  world  of  pure  mechanism  and  blind  ( ?)  law  and 
meaningless  force,  rushing  onward  to  an  irrational  goal;  and 
the  other  a  world  controlled  by  personal  Will  in  the  pursuit, 
and  progressive  realization  of  moral  and  sesthetical  ideals. 
Man's  spirit,  as  a  totality,  craves  the  satisfactions  of  a  reality 
that  provides  for  these  ideals.  Himself  a  spirit  in  the  world, 
he  will  have  Spirit  in  his  World;  and  this,  in  order  that  the 
World  may  the  better  answer  to  his  total  Self.  But  the  evi- 
dence for  the  reality  of  human  ideals  is  confessedly  not  of 
the  same  character  as  that  with  which  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences  deal.  Nor  can  the  methods  for  testing  its  presence 
and  estimating  its  value  be  precisely  the  same.  It  will  not 
do,  however,  to  say  that  morals,  art,  and  religion,  are  matters 
of  mere  conjecture,  fields  of  experience  in  which  any  indi- 
vidual may  hold  with  assurance  and  safety  such  opinions  as 
he  will.  On  the  contrary,  many  kinds  of  the  facts  upon  which 
opinion  must  be  based  are  more  abundant  and  more  sure  in 
ethics,  aesthetics,  and  the  philosophy  of  religion,  than  they  are 
in  the  general  field  of  the  more  positive  sciences.  But  since 
both  the  underlying  postulates  and  the  ultimate  conclusions 
of  morality,  art,  and  religion  have  rather  to  do  with  a  doctrine 
of  values  and  with  the  construction  of  truths  valid  for  conduct 
and  for  life;  it  is  the  profounder  sentiments  and  higher  flights 
of  imagination  which  are  given  more  influence  in  forming  a 
philosophy  of  the  ideal.  Thus  the  whole  spirit  of  man,  while 
consciously  remaining  faithful  to  the  conclusions  of  the  par- 
ticular sciences  as  to  the  nature  and  laws  of  those  concrete  real- 
ities with  which  they,  respectively  deal,  is  stimulated  by  moral, 
artistic,  and  religious  needs  and  aspirations  to  frame  a  concep- 
tion of  the  World-Ground  as  the  Ideal-Real.  More  definitely, 
and  by  uniting  the  claims  of  every  form  of  his  idealizing,  he 
regards  the  Being  of  the  World  as  essentially  that  of  a  Personal 
Spirit  who  is  aesthetically  and  ethically  perfect;  and  all  the 


538  KNOWLEDGE,  LIFE,  AND  REALITY 

phenomena,   both  physical  and  psychical,  then  become  inter- 
preted as  a  dependent  manifestation  of  Him. 

Philosophy,  however  speculative  it  may  seem  or  really  be,  is 
not  properly  designed,  or  safely  employed,  for  purposes  of 
speculation  only.  Its  problems  are  not  questions  to  be  con- 
sidered in  the  mood  of  the  reckless  adventurer  or  of  the  unin- 
terested dilettante.  There  are  no  other  fires  so  dangerous  for 
the  soul  to  play  with  as  those  that  burn  in  the  bosom  of  reflec- 
tion. Friends  may  pardon,  and  society  may  not  care,  if  the 
treatment  accorded  to  them  is  persistently  flippant.  But  phi- 
losophy never.  Its  test  of  truth  is  not  pragmatic,  in  any  defi- 
nite and  intelligible  meaning  which  can  be  attached  to  that 
much-abused  word.  But  its  teachings,  although  they  require 
hardships,  the  renunciation  of  an  absorbing  passion  for  the 
things  of  subordinate  value,  and  even  oftentimes  the  scorn  of 
ease  and  pleasure,  are  meant  for  the  comfort,  guidance,  and 
uplift,  of  human  life.  We  are  all  pupils;  we  shall  never 
know  otherwise  than  dimly,  and  except  in  part.  And  God's 
Universe  is  our  great  Teacher,  although  we  are  indeed  small 
enough  part  of  it.  But  if  we  have  tlie  philosophic,  which  is 
also  the  truly  scientific  spirit,  we  shall  raise  our  voice  to  It 
and  say,  in  words   of  ancient  wisdom: 

"From   the   unreal   lead   me  to   the  real. 
From  darkness  lead  me  into  light. 
From   death   lead   me  to   immortality." 


THE   END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Absohtte,  the,  as  Personal,  18, 
2«5,  266f.  (Chap,  xxi),  4G()f., 
4G4f.,  471,  472f.,  478f.,  503,  550; 
negative  concept  of,  criticized, 
161f.;  as  identified  with  Na- 
ture, 262,  499,  463,  501;  as 
self-determining  Mind,  266f., 
479f.,  498,  51  Of.;  only  adjec- 
tival use  of  the  word,  justifi- 
able, 464f.,  468,  469,  481f.,  511. 

Absolutism,  tlie  philosophy  of, 
157,  161,  464f.,  469,  51  If.,  513, 
515. 

.Esthetics,  psychological  basis 
of,  366f.,  368f.,  378f.,  384f., 
398f.,  409f.,  420;  physiological 
basis  of,  368f.,  392f.,  399f.,  409; 
objective  cliaracter  of,  370f., 
424;  use  of  judgment  in,  374f. ; 
ideals  of,  a78f.,  384f.,  420,  423, 
424;  diversity  of  opinions  in, 
379f.;  effective  factors  in,  409f., 
411,  414f.,  420,  423;  place  of, 
in  culture,  428f. ;  influences  of, 
in  religion,  449f.,  493. 

Agnosticism,  nature  of  the  phi- 
losophical, 42f.,  99f.  (Chap, 
vii),  127,  149;  the  Kantian, 
in  especial,  43,  96f.,  137f., 
154f. ;  as  legitimate  and  neces- 
sary, 127f.,  134,  140f.,  143,  145f., 
147;  limits  of,  128f.,  132,  135, 
146f. ;  kinds  of,  in  religion,  139, 
142,  506f. 

Anaximandee,  doctrine  of,  4. 

Anturopomorpiiism,  term  as  ap- 
plied to  knowledge,  117f.,  185, 
195,  199f.,  201,  206;  and  to  all 
theories  of  reality,  185f.,  195f., 
206,  448;  special  uses  of,  in  re- 
ligion, 448f.,  454f. 

Antinomies,  specious  use  of  the 
word,    150;    the    term    a    mis- 


nomer, 150f. ;  philosophical  doe 
trine  of,  confuted,  151. 

Akcuitectube,  the  utilitarian  and 
the  ffisthetical  points  of  view, 
in,  389,  390,  392;  as  appealing 
to  the  eye,  390f.,  392;  the 
Greek  and  the  Muhamniadan, 
392f. ;  as  allied  to  sculpture, 
393f. 

Aristotle,  on  philosophy,  1,  4; 
his  realism,  35,  101 ;  and  con- 
ception of  formal  logic,  101, 
171;  his  doctrine  of  the  cate- 
gories, 171f. ;  on  nature  of 
ethics,  272,  277,  319,  324f.;  and 
of  so-called  "  general  justice," 
319,  325;  on  falsehood,  320;  on 
the  nature  of  morality,  325. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  158, 
161,  357. 

Art,  basis  of,  in  human  nature 
(Chap,  xvii),  377f.,  384f.,  391f., 
398f.,  400f.,  409f.,  420,  424; 
ideals  of,  377f.,  3811,  384f.,  387, 
398,  420,  423,  424;  nature  of 
the  art-object,  384f.,  388,  39  If., 
396,  403,  412,  414,  420,  423; 
how  far  imitative,  398f.,  403. 

Arts,  the,  classification  and  na- 
ture (Chap,  xviii),  385f.,  409f.; 
landscape-gardening,  386f.,  388; 
architecture,  389,  392f.;  sculp- 
ture, 394f.;  the  pictorial,  397f., 
399;  of  music,  399f.,  402,  403; 
the   poetical,  404f.,  406. 

Atheism,  its  position  in  phi- 
losophy, 505f.,  509,  519. 

Atman,  Hindu  conception  of, 
450,  515;  relation  of  individual 
soul  to,  515f. 

Beauty,  spirit  of,  attempt  to 
analyze,    381f.,    384f.,    387,    395 

541 


543 


INDEX 


(Chap,  xix),  424,  426f.,  535f.; 
as  implying  plan  in  the  object, 
384f.,  396f.,  398;  quality  of 
life-likeness  in,  387,  395,  397, 
402,  415;  kinds  of,  392f.,  409f., 
410,  413,  414,  416,  418;  of  sub- 
limity, 411f. ;  beauty  of  grace, 
413f. ;  and  of  the  orderly,  414; 
and  of  the  luxuriant,  416f. ; 
and  of  the  handsome,  418f. ;  as 
related  to  morals,  426f.,  428. 

Being  of  the  World,  as  abstract 
phrase,  equivalent  to  Nature, 
199,  200f.,  210,  217,  357,  424f., 
451,  462,  480,  504;  compli- 
cated modern  conception  of, 
202f.,  207f.,  220,  461f.;  compre- 
hensiveness of  term,  216,  357, 
504;  ideal  character  of,  358, 
373f.,  424f.,  434f.,  491,  501, 
502,  504;  as  Ethical  Spirit, 
436,  463f.  (Chap,  xxii),  491, 
504f.,   535f. 

Bradley,  Mr.,  his  doctrine  of  the 
antinomies   of   reason,    152. 

Browning,  quoted,  352. 

Buddhism,  pliilosophic  sects  in, 
3 ;  its  doctrine  of  Karma,  450f ., 
486. 

BuciiNER,  his  conception  of  Mat- 
ter, 261    (note). 

Categories,  the,  Kant's  view  of, 
59f.,  100;  denial  of,  the  ulti- 
matum of  philosophical  scepti- 
cism, 100,  148f.;  difficulty  of 
enumerating  them,  148f.,  160f., 
171f.,  174;  not  impotencies  of 
intellect,  161,  433;  as  involved 
in  all  cognition,  162f.,  433; 
enumeration  of,  164,  216;  essen- 
tial nature  of,  165f.  (Chap,  ix), 
174,  175,  177,  191,  216,  433; 
necessity  of  harmonizing  the, 
177f. ;  as  used  in  the  concep- 
tion of  Nature,  216f..  223f., 
258f.,   263,   293,   463,   501. 

Cause,  Kantian  conception  of,  re- 
futed, 114f. ;  relation  of,  to  the 
"objectivity"   of   Things,    115f., 


168,  173,  186,  210,  212;  origin 
of  conception  of,  116f.,  118f., 
168,  169f.,  173,  189;  the  dy- 
namic view  of,  189,  222. 

Certainty,  the  grounds  of,  129f.. 
133f.,  153,  162f.,  460  (see  also 
Agnosticism,  and  Knowledge). 

Challis,  quoted,  221. 

Chalybaus,  on  the  spirit  of  phi- 
losophy, 22. 

Change,  as  a  category,  of  all 
things,  lOlf.,  104,  112,  188,  193; 
and  of  the  Self,  103,  107,  136, 
198,  225    (see  also  Evolution). 

Character,  importance  of  the 
conception  in  ethics,  309f. ;  na- 
ture of  the  conception  of,  310. 

Chwang-Tsze,  quoted,  107. 

Clerk-Maxwell,  his  conception 
of  energy,  221,  256;  and  of 
matter,  256f. 

Cognition  (see  also  Knowl- 
edge), nature  of,  analyzed,  61f., 
66,  155f. ;  always  an  activity, 
66  f.,  155;  dependence  of,  on  will, 
6Gf.,  1U9;  necessary  forms  of, 
161,  174f.,  177,  191,  216;  as 
giving  a  clue  to  the  conception 
of  causation,    169f.,   173,   189. 

"  Common-Sense,"  its  view  of  the 
constitution  of   Things,  45f. 

Conduct,  the  conception  of, 
analyzed,  27 If.,  294;  as  subject- 
matter  of  ethics,  271,  276f., 
294f . ;  as  governed  by  sesthetical 
considerations,   366f. 

Consciousness,  the  so-called 
"discriminating,"  65f.,  71,  103f., 
195,  197,  225;  the  conative, 
80f.,  169,  173,  189;  of  the  Self, 
82f.,  84f.,  226f.,  228f.;  not  com- 
parable to  a  "  stream,"  226, 
235;  of  being  "free,"  or  of 
ability,  305f.,  310,  452;  and  of 
imputability,  307f.,  452f.;  the 
a?sthetical  "(Chap,  xvii),  368f., 
372f.,  374,  409f.;  the  religious 
(Chap.  XX),  431,  436,  442f., 
449f. 

Ceiticism,    nature    of    the    phi- 


INDEX 


643 


losophical,  42f.  (Chap,  vii),  126, 
130,  137,  143;  as  legitimate, 
126f.,  137;  limits  of,  128;  dis- 
tinctions involved  in  the  Kan- 
tian, 137f. 

Ceitiquk,  the  Kantian,  aim  of, 
38f.,   43,  58,  59,    100,   137f. 

Curiosity,  nature  of  the  intellec- 
tual,  11  If. 

D'Alviella,    quoted,   4!)2f. 

Descartes,  his  conception  of  phi- 
losophy, 5 ;  his  theory  of  knowl- 
edge, 91,  146f. 

Dogmatism,  nature  of,   42. 

Dualism,  as  a  school  in  phi- 
losophy, 44f.,  46,  489;  valid 
claims  of,  47f. ;  but,  in  system- 
atic form,  discredited,  50f. ;  in 
religion,  489f. 

Duty,  the  conception  of,  in  ethics, 
329f.,  334f. ;  as  apostrophised, 
330. 

Eclecticism,  in  philosophy,  42, 
44. 

Energy,  modern  scientific  con- 
ception of,  220f.,  222  (note), 
250;  objectivity  of,  221;  storing 
of,  221f.    (see  also  Force). 

Epictetus,    quoted,    490. 

Epistemology,  as  a  department  of 
philosophy,  58,  94f. 

Ethics,  special  relation  of,  to  phi- 
losophy, 17f.  (Chap,  xiii),  270f., 
338f.;  its  sphere,  268f.,  277, 
325f.,  338f.;  and  divisions, 
269f.,  277;  scientific  conception 
of,  270f.,  275;  nature  of  its 
facts,  27 If.,  275f.  (Chap,  xiv), 
295f.,  339f.;  place  of  judgment 
in,  282f.,  285f.,  2i89f.,  297f.;  sig- 
nificance of  motives  in,  293, 
325f. ;  evolution  of,  in  the 
race,  300f.,  337;  ideals  of,  312f., 
328,  336f.,  355f.,  361f.;  concep- 
tion of  law,  as  applied  to,  331f., 
333f.,  335;  schools  of  (Chap, 
xvi),  337f.,  339,  340f.,  343f., 
353f.;    Legalism    in,    339,    340f., 


355;  Utilitarianism  in.  343f., 
346f.,  348f.,  355;  Idealism  in, 
355f. 

EucKEN,  quoted,  432;  on  the  "in- 
strumental theory "  of  evil, 
486. 

Everett,  Prof.  C.  C,  quoted,  430. 

Evil,  Problem  of,  from  biological 
point  of  view,  484f.;  "instru- 
mental theory"  of,  485f. ;  as  a 
theodicy,  486f.,  488,  490f.,  494; 
in  tlie  lower  forms  of  religion, 
489;  Christian  view  of,  492f., 
494. 

Evolution,  assumptions  of,  224, 
521;  kinds  of  the  theory  of, 
52  If. 

Faith,  of  intellect  in  itself,  120f,, 
123;  as  ontological  in  charac- 
ter, 124f.,  149f.,  434f.,  444;  as 
related  to  knowledge,  138f., 
454,  458,  459f.;  Object  of,  in 
religion,  434f.    (see  also,  God). 

Feeling,  function  of  in  cognition, 
61f.,  68f.,  74;  the,  "of  efi'ort," 
70f. 

Feelings,  the  so-called  "  intellec- 
tual," 69f.,  72f.;  the  sesthetical, 
74f.,  306f.,  368f.,  400;  the 
ethical  (Chap,  xiv),  280f.,  289, 
294f.,  339f. ;  of  approbation  and 
disapprobation,  289f. ;  and  of 
merit  and  demerit,  29 If.;  spe- 
cial appeal  of  music  to,  400f. 

Ficiite,  quoted,  41 ;  on  the  moral 
World  Order,    363. 

Flint,  Prof.,  on  the  kind  of  Ag- 
nosticism, 506f. ;  and  on  Pan- 
theism, 507f. 

Force,  as  a  category,  l80f.,  186, 
189,  218,  256f.  (see  also 
Energy)  ;  as  a  unifying  cause, 
186f.,  ISOf.,  222,  223f.;  the  so- 
called   "vital,"   190f. 

Freedom,  problem  of.  as  related 
to  the  nature  of  the  mind,  238f., 
243,  245f..  247f.,  302f.;  nature 
of,  as  constituting  moral  Self- 
hood,    301f.,     310,     328f.,     331, 


544 


INDEX 


346f. ;  arguments  for  and 
against,  302f.,  306f.;  as  deter- 
mining personal  character,  310, 
452;  in  the  life  of  religion, 
452f. 

God,  as  Object  of  faitli,  in  re- 
ligion, 441f.,  450,  458f.,  498f., 
502 ;  so-called  "  ontological  argu- 
ment "  for,  442,  458f.;  asthet- 
ical  sentiments  toward,  449f. ; 
as  source  of  morals,  450f.,  452; 
conception  of,  as  anthropomor- 
phic, 454f. ;  as  the  World- 
Ground,  456f.,  460,  464f.,  468f., 
47'8f.,  506f.;  alleged  "vision 
of"  illusive,  458f. ;  the  so-called 
"  consciousness  "  of,  458f. ;  as  in- 
finite and  absolute,  464f.,  466f., 
468,  471,  472f.,  478,  498f.,  520f.; 
as  Ethical  Spirit  (Chap,  xxii), 
484f.,  486f.,  488,  496f.,  498, 
523f. ;  metaphysical  predicates 
of,  479f.,  498,  510;  omniscience 
of,  481f.,  510;  co-consciousness 
of,  482f.,  517,  518;  evidences  for 
goodness  of,  488f.,  491f.;  holi- 
ness of,  496f.,  498;  doctrine  of 
his  immanence,  506f.,  508,  536; 
pantheistic  conception  of,  508f., 
512;  as  "First  Cause,"  522; 
and  Moral  Euler,  523. 

Greeks,  philosophy  among  the, 
3,  33,  359;  their  discussions,  33. 

Haeckel,  quoted,  23. 

Hartmann,  von,  quoted,  49;  on 
the  sources  of  religion,  439. 

Hedonism  (see  also  Utilitarian- 
ism), nature  of  the  older  form, 
343;  of  the  newer  forms,  344f., 
354. 

Hegel,  his  definition  of  phi- 
losophy, 6f;  view  of  relations 
between  metaphysics  and  theory 
of  knowledge,  57 ;  criticism  of 
current  ontology,  162;  on  the 
nature  of  the  art-object,  412. 

Herbart,  on  relations  of  phi- 
losophy to  psychology,  16;  on 
neglect  of  philosophy,  23,  160. 


Hodgson,   Shadworth,    quoted,    1, 

160. 
Hopkins,    Prof.,    on    the    Upani- 

shads,   475. 
Humboldt,   quoted,  318,  437. 
Hume,   his  theory  of  "  objective " 

knowledge,   114. 
Huxley,  quoted,  263f. 


Idea,  the,  Platonic  conception  of, 
4,  21. 

Ideal,  philosophy  of  the,  30, 
269f.;  nature  of  the  Moral 
Ideal,  328f.,  336f.,  355f.,  36 If.; 
and  of  the  ^sthetical,  378f., 
384f.,  420,  423,  424;  the  Ideal- 
Real  (see  the  World-Gbound, 
and  God). 

Idealism,  as  a  school  of  phi- 
losophy, 44f.,  53 ;  early  forms  of, 
46;  of  India,  48f. ;  in  need  of 
realism,  46,  59;  in  Ethics,  338, 
356f.,  30 If.;  and  in  Esthetics, 
378,  384f,  420,  423f. 

Ideas,  the  so-called  "  innate," 
120f.,  234;  as  immanent  in 
things,  191f.,  232f.,  240f.;  "of 
value,"  234f. 

Identity,  Principle  of,  as  used 
in  formal  logic,  lOlf.,  106, 
511;  its  validity  discussed, 
102f. ;  as  applied  to  the  Self, 
103f.,  107,  511;  and  to  Things, 
104,  112;  always  a  metaphysi- 
cal formula,  106,  118f. ;  as  ap- 
plied to  relations  of  the  World 
and  the  Divine  Being,  511f., 
613. 

Imagination,  in  the  appreciation 
of  beauty,  375f.,  378;  in  science, 
376f.,  446;  in  construction  of 
ideals,  378f.,  446;  especially  of 
religious  faith,  446f. 

Immortality,  possibility  of,  for 
the  mind,  248f.,  521;  theologi- 
cal doctrine  of,  251,  524f. ;  as 
dependent  on  conception  of  God, 
as  Ethical  Spirit,  524. 

Infinite,  the,   as   identified  with 


INDEX 


545 


the  Unknowable,  464f.,  4G7,  40!), 
472f. 
Intellect,  function  of,  in  cogni- 
tion, 6  If.,  112,  297;  logical 
satisfactions  of,  112f.,  llSf., 
141 ;  primary  faiths  of  the, 
119f.,  121,  124;  ethical  signifi- 
cance of,  2{)7f. 

Jacobi,  "  faith  philosophy  "  of, 
120f. 

Judgment,  as  element  in  all  cog- 
nition, 62f.,  64,  107;  the  "psy- 
chological," 64f. ;  the  cognitive, 
its  nature  and  goal,  107,  13.3f., 
374f. ;  in  morals  and  religion, 
140f.,  282,  290,  314f.;  nature 
and  origin  of  the  ethical,  282f., 
285f.,  287,  289f.,  297f.;  and  its 
"internalization."  295f.,  345f.; 
diversity  of,  in  morals,  314f. ; 
virtues  of  the,  318f.;  the  sesthet- 
ical,  374f. 

Kant,  his  conception  of  philos- 
ophy, 5f.,  35,  57,  341;  and  its 
divisions,  6;  philosophic  aims 
of,  35,  60;  his  view  of  meta- 
physics, 57 ;  dominant  interest 
in  morals,  58,  138,  341f.;  his 
doctrine  of  the  "  categories," 
59f.,  171f. ;  defective  theory  of 
knowledge,  68,  96f.,  114f.,  252; 
doctrine  of  "  noumena,"  96f., 
156,  252,  517;  relation  of,  to 
Hume,  113f. ;  his  treatment  of 
causality,  114f. ;  his  distinction 
between  faith  and  knowledge, 
137f. ;  conception  of  mathemat- 
ics, 144f. ;  and  doctrine  of  an- 
tinomies, 150,  151 ;  denies  pos- 
sibility of  metaphysics,  as  on- 
tology, 154;  criticizes  Aristotle, 
171f. ;  but  adopts  his  division 
of  judgment,  172f. ;  his  legal- 
ism in  ethics,  341f.,  343,  355f.; 
theory  of  art,  384f. ;  his  doc- 
trine of  the  sublime,  411f. ;  on 
the  ontological  argument,  441f. 


KAitMA,  Buddhistic  conception  of, 
450f.,  486. 

Knowleuge,  philosophy  of,  its 
problems,  57,  lOOf.,  122,  529; 
its  method  debated,  57,  529;  as 
related  to  metapliysics,  57f., 
124f.,  act  of,  analyzed,  6  If., 
66f.;  part  of  judgment  in,  62, 
64f.,  93;  as  activity,  6Gf.,  155; 
influence  of  asthetical  feelings 
upon,  74f. ;  and  of  moral  emo- 
tions, 75f.,  140f. ;  as  involving 
Reality,  77f.,  88,  153f.,  155, 
162f.,  460f.,  529f.;  kinds  of, 
78f.;  of  the  Self,  79,  82f.,  84, 
92f.;  of  Things,  85f.,  87f.,  162f., 
165;  degrees  of,  90f. ;  growth  of, 
93f.,  104,  112,  470;  as  related 
to  life,  95,  143;  limits  of,  95f., 
96f.,  100,  136,  138f.,  470f.;  not 
of  phenomena,  96f.,  529;  pre- 
suppositions of,  lOlf.,  119f. ; 
necessarily  anthropomorpliic, 
195f.,  448,  454f.,  529f.,  536. 

Koran,  the,  on  the  unity  of  God, 
481. 

Landscape-Gaedening,  material 
and  ideals  of,  386f. ;  the  Jap- 
anese, 388. 

Law,  origin  of  the  conception  of, 
112f.,  117f.,  182f.,  330;  import- 
ance of  the  category  of,  189f., 
191 ;  as  used  in  ethics,  330, 
332f.,  335,  339f.,  341;  Ivantian 
view  of,  criticized,  341f. 

Leibnitz,  his  conception  of  phi- 
losophy, 5. 

Localization,  by  the  senses,  7 If. 

Locke,  his  conception  of  philos- 
ophy, 5,  15;  influence  of  Essay 
of,  15f. ;  on  nature  of  morality, 
325. 

LoTZE,  quoted,  9,  lOf.,  29,  327; 
on  the  "  essence "  of  virtue, 
327f. 

Mathematics,  as  applied  to 
things,  166f.,  215f.,  411;  the 
so-called     "pure,"      215f.;      the 


546 


INDEX 


mathematically    sublime,    411f. 

Matter,  as  abstract,  general  con- 
ception, 2541,  257,  259,  261 
(note)  ;  attempts  of  science  to 
define,  255f. ;  as  having  mass, 
256f. ;  and  needing  to  be  sup- 
plemented by  the  conception  of 
Mind,  257f.,  261,  536. 

Maya,  the  doctrine  of,  48f. 

Mechanism,  theory  of,  assump- 
tions involved  in,  215f. ;  not  ap- 
plicable to  development  of  the 
Mind,  240f. 

Metaphysics,  Aristotle's  concep- 
tion of,  1,  5,  172;  relation  of, 
to  theory  of  knowledge,  57f., 
106f.,  154f.;  of  the  principle  of 
identity,  106f.,  llSf.;  as  a 
theory  of  Reality  (Chap,  viii), 
1581,  175,  182,  1!)(3,  2G4f., 
4401;  the  method  ol  1581,  160, 
1^6;  ignorant  contempt  of, 
lOOf. ;  as  doctrine  of  actual  re- 
lations, 182f.,  264f.;  ultimate 
problem  of,  264f.,  440;  as  neces- 
sary to  religion,  441f. 

Mind,  philosophy  of  (Chap,  x), 
2311,  235;  not  a  "stream  of 
consciousness,"  2261,  235;  na- 
ture of  the  reality  of,  2351, 
23-71,  239;  as  self-determining, 
2391,  243,  245f.,  248;  but  sub- 
ject to  pliysical  inlhiences,  248f. ; 
as  immanent  in  Matter,  257f., 
2811,   536. 

Monism,  as  a  philosophy,  48f.,  51, 
4891 ;  Indian  form  of,  48f . ;  per- 
manent claims  of,  49f.,  5  If.; 
task  of,  51f. ;  materialistic  form 
of,  53 ;  religious  form  of,  489f., 
494,  498. 

Moral  Laav,  the,  origin  of  the 
conception  of,  330,  331f.,  333f., 
335. 

Moral  Philosophy  (see  also 
Ethics),  as  branch  of  meta- 
physics, 17,  269,  274,  309f., 
3381;   schools  of.  3.38f.  ( 

Music,  a»stlietical  cliaraeteristics 
of,  3991,   403;    its   peculiar   ap- 


peal to  the  feelings,  causes  of, 
400f. ;  freedom  of,  as  an  art, 
402;  as  imitative  of  nature, 
403. 

Naturalism,  the  scientific,  263f., 
5161,  522;  as  needing  to  be  sup- 
plemented by  conception  of  the 
Supernatural,  517f.,  521f. ;  evo- 
lutionary theory  of,   522f. 

Nature,  Kantian  theory  of  its 
"objectivity"  refuted,  114f. ; 
modern  scientific  conception  of, 
2081,  211,  214,  216,  222,  2581, 
5161;  as  applied  to  things, 
209,  2111,  5161,  5331;  as  ap- 
plied to  the  system  of  Tilings 
and  Selves,  216,  222,  223f., 
2581,  263,  293,  463,  501;  but 
implying  immanent  Spirit,  259f., 
2631,  293,  383,  422,  4241,  429, 
4631,  501 ;  poetical  uses  of  the 
word,  2601,  357;  as  implying 
moral  qualities,  357f.,  360;  as 
ffisthetical,    365,    383,    422,    429. 

Newton,  dictum  of,  as  to  gravity, 
222. 

Noumena,  Kant's  doctrine  of, 
961,  156,  252,  517. 

Number,  category  of,  as  employed 
by  science,  2151 

Obligation,  feeling  of,  analyzed, 
27!)f.,  330;  not  a  pleasure-pain 
sensation,  2801;  source  of  the 
cimipulsion,    2811,     2841,    330. 

Painting,  characteristic  aesthet- 
ical  qualities  of,  397f. ;  as  imi- 
tative,  3981;    schools   of,   399f. 

Panthei&m,  varieties  of,  508, 
514;  fundamental  differences 
between,  and  theistic  concep- 
tions, 508f.,  511f. :  as  applied  to 
personal    relations,    513. 

Parmenides,  his  conception  of  Na- 
ture, 261. 

Pfleiderer,  on  the  sources  of  the 
Aryan  religion,   438. 


INDEX 


547 


Phenomena,  misuse  of  the  coi> 
coption  of,  156f.,  529  (see  also 
Things). 

Philosophy,  conception  of,  1,  5. 
8,  19f.,  31f.,  56,  430f.,  526;  in 
China,  3;  in  Japan,  3;  among 
Muhammadans,  3;  its  origin  in 
Greece,  3f. ;  the  so-called  "  nat- 
ural," 4,  195f. ;  relation  of,  to 
theologjs  5,  430,  504;  Kant's 
view  of,  5f. ;  relation  of,  to  sci- 
ence, 8f.,  14f.,  19,  26f.  (Chap, 
x),  526;  as  an  independent  dis- 
cipline, 8f.,  526;  deductive 
theory  of,  abandoned,  11  f.,  527, 
528;  causes  of  distate  for,  12f., 
527f. ;  special  relations  of,  to 
psychology,  15f.,  25f. ;  the  so- 
called  "moral,"  17,  269,  274, 
309f.,  356f.;  "problem"  of, 
19f.,  504f.,  530;  divisions  of, 
20,  28f.,  30;  method  peculiar 
to,  21f.,  24,  38,  530f.;  spirit  of, 
21f.,  23;  studies  especially  re- 
lated to,  25f. ;  value  of  history 
of,  26f. ;  as  analytic,  27f. ;  as 
synthetic,  28;  schools  of 
(Chap,  iii)  ;  influence  of  tem- 
perament in,  38;  limitations  of, 
40f.,  44f.  55f.,  528,  529;  need 
of  compromises  in,  44f.,  54f., 
529;  kinds  of,  56,  195f.;  of  Na- 
ture (Chap,  x),  198f.;  of 
Beauty  (Chap,  xix),  409,  421; 
of   Religion    (Chap,   xx),  430f. 

Philosophy,  Schools  of,  (Chap, 
iii),  popular  misunderstandings 
about,  33f.,  36;  the  founders 
af,  34f.;  sources  of,  35,  37f., 
52;  detailed  differences  of,  36f., 
52f. ;  effect  of  temperament  on, 
38f. ;  improperly  so-called,  42f ., 
44;  the  three,  properly  so- 
called,  44f. ;  practical  truths 
concerning,  55. 

PiSTis  Sophia,  the  writing,  quoted 
from,  475. 

Plato,  his  conception  of  phi- 
losophy. 4,  21,  320;  nature  of 
his   idealism,  4,  21,  35;   quoted, 


320 ;  on  nature  of  wisdom,  327 ; 
on  a  theodicy,  487. 

PoKTUY,  as  a>sthetical  use  of  lan- 
guage, 404f. ;  leading  charac- 
teristics of,  404f.,  400;  aesthet- 
ical   effect  of,   406f. 

Pragmatism,  relation  of,  to  ra- 
tionalism, 37. 

Psychology,  relation  of,  to  phi- 
losophy, 14f . ;  "  without  a 
soul,"   16f.;  of  cognition,  61f. 

Quality,  as  a  category  of  all 
things,  187f.,  216f. 

Quantity,  as  a  category,  not  suf- 
ficient to  account  for  constitu- 
tion  of   things,   217,   256f. 

Raymond,  du  Bois,  quoted,  221, 
256. 

Realism,  as  a  school  in  phi- 
losophy, 35,  44f.,  59;  primitive 
forms  of,  45f.;  its  need  of  the 
Ideal,  46,  59f. 

Reality,  as  involved  in  knowl- 
edge, 76f.,  88f.,  155f.,  175f.,  194, 
253,  460f.,  529f.;  primary  prop- 
ositions regarding,  175f.,  194; 
of  the  World,  as  a  whole,  253f. 

Reflection,  as  method  of  phi- 
losophy. If.  (Chap,  ii),  llf., 
21f.,  24,  38. 

Relation,  importance  of,  as  cate- 
gory, 176,  180,  182f.;  meaning 
of,  as  applied  to  Things,  182f., 
184;  not  merely  subjective, 
lS3f. 

Religion,  p.sychological  sources  of, 
(Chap.  XX),  433f.,  436,  43Sf., 
440,  447f.,  449,  4511;  nature  of 
the  experience  of,  431.  440,  447, 
45ftf.,  493 ;  definition  of,  433 ; 
relations  of,  to  science.  434f., 
460f.;  Object  of  faith  in.  436, 
444f.,  458f.,  502;  metaphysical 
postulate  of,  441.  443f..  455; 
influence  of  aesthetical  feeling 
in,  449f..  493;  and  of  moral 
sentiments,     150f.,    472,    493. 

RiBOT,  quoted,  158. 


oiS 


INDEX 


lliEHL,  quoted,  73. 

Scepticism,  nature  of  tlie  phi- 
losophical, 42f.,  100  (Chap, 
vii),  14Gf;  its  ultimate  form, 
100;  limits  of,  128f.,  133f.,  135, 
14Gf.,  434;  necessity  for  prac- 
tical  solution   of,    128f.,  434f. 

SciiLEiERMACHER,  pantheistic  con- 
ceptions of,  508. 

Schopenhauer,  liis  criticism  of 
Kant,  73,  88f. ;  conclusion  as 
to  essence  of  things,  69,  437 ; 
criticism  of  Jacobi,  120;  view 
of,  as  to  the  province  of  intel- 
lect in  cognition,  123;  and  as 
to  the  "  will  to  live,"  437f. 

SciiULTZ,  quoted,  459, 

ScHURMAN,    quoted,    465. 

Science,  criticism  of  the  cate- 
gories of,  14f.  (Chap.  X),  220, 
22 If.,  224;  ontological  faith  of, 
124f.,  434;  grounds  of  cer- 
tainty in,  131f.,  133;  relations 
of,  to  religion,  434f. 

Sciences,  the  "  particular,"  rela- 
tion of,  to  philosoph}',  9f.,  14f., 
19,  26f.,  145,  197f.;  as  descrip- 
tive, 133f. ;  characteristics  of 
the  so-called  "  psychological," 
134f. ;  interdependence  of,  145f. ; 
their  need  of  criticism,  197f. 
(note). 

Sculpture,  as  related  to  archi- 
tecture, 394;  chief  characteris- 
tics  of,   394f. 

Self,  the,  psychological  develop- 
ment of,  79f.,  82,  198f.,  225, 
235;  feelings  of,  81.  232f.,  243; 
identity  of  the,  103f.,  107,  136, 
198,  225,  229f.,  231';  such  terms 
as  "  unconscious  "  and  "  sub- 
conscious "  inapplicable  to, 
136f.,  227,  233;  ability  of,  to 
transcend  itself,  146f.,  229f.;  as 
distinguishing  itself  from 
Things,  198f.,  225f.;  essentially 
a  mind,  227f.,  231f.;  nature  of 
the  consciousness  of,  228f. ;  and 
of  its  reality,  229f.,  235,  236f.; 


tlie  moral  Self,  272f.,  274f. 
(Cliap.  xiv),  278f.,  285f.,  2!lif., 
298f.,  3Ulf.,  303f.,  328f.,  331, 
34Gf. 

Sociology,  vague  conception  of, 
17. 

Soul,  psychological  use  of  word 
(see  also  Self),  22Gf. ;  immor- 
tality of,  248f. 

Space,  as  a  category,  of  all  things, 
lG2f.,    1G4,   173,   178. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  unity  of 
Forces,  189;  on  nature  of  etliics, 
273. 

Spinoza,  his  conception  of  plii- 
losophy,  5,  35;  pliilosophic  aims 
of,  35;  his  dualistic  conception 
of  Nature,  263,  515;  on  sources 
of  religion,  438. 

Spirit,  immanency  of,  in  Matter, 
254f.,  263,  264f.,  436,  506f.,  5:!G; 
the  Absolute,  incomprehensible, 
265f.,  4G5f. ;  but  conceived  of  as 
Ethical,  436,  460. 

Subjectivism,  as  outcome  of  the 
Kantian  criticism,  156f.  (see 
also  Idealism). 

Substance,  the  category  of,  its 
nature  analyzed,  164f.,  167, 
187;  as  involving  the  mystery 
of  existence,    167f.,    173,    187. 

Sufficient  Reason,  Principle 
OF,  as  used  in  formal  logic, 
lOlf.,  107f.,  113;  its  validity 
discussed,  107f.,  llOf. ;  facts  un- 
derlying it,  108f. ;  metaphysical 
meaning  of,  llOf.,  118,  '  124; 
wherein  consists  their  "  suffi- 
ciency,"  112f.,   118f.,   129f.,   142. 

Supernatural,  the,  meaning  of 
tlie  term,  516f. ;  legitimate  con- 
ception of,  517f.,  519f. 

Sympathy,  psycliological  doctrine 
of,  315f.,  321  ;  not  essentially 
altruistic,  321f. 

Tabu,  significance  of,  in  religion. 

450f. 
Tait.  quoted,  221,  256. 
Teichmuller,    quoted,    193. 


INDEX 


549 


Theodicy,  problem  of  a,  48Gf., 
488,  490f. ;  argument  from  igno- 
rance, 488f. ;  evidences  for  faitli, 
488f.,  490f. 

Theoky  of  Reality  (see  also 
Metaphysics  ) ,  popular  form 
of,  15!);  as  a  doctrine  of  tiio 
categories,  175f.,  ISSf.,  199; 
must  be  dynamical,  lS8f.,  l!)2; 
justifies  a  certain  kind  of  per- 
sonification, 1!)9;  but  the  sci- 
ences have  objections  to  urge, 
207  f. 

TiiiNo-iN-iTSELF  (see  Noumenon), 
scientific  conception  of,  as  in- 
cluded in  the  use  of  the  term 
"nature,"  212f.,  214;  Kantian 
use,  unmeaning,  252. 

Things,  the  cognition  of,  87f., 
104f.,  112,  163,  165,  536;  re- 
garded as  under  law,  112f.,  179; 
nature  of  their  objectivity, 
115f.,  165,  197f.,  214;  ontologi- 
cal  character  of,  163,  165f.,  178, 
184,  220,  232,  240,  518f.,  531; 
measurableness  of,  166f.,  215f. ; 
as  concrete  realization  of  all 
the  categories,  178,  191,  220, 
232;  nature  of  the  unity  of, 
179,  191,  518f.,  520;  as  actually 
related,  184f. ;  and  subject  to 
change,  188f. ;  ideal  character 
of,  19  If.,  209;  how  distin- 
guished from  selves,  197f., 
209f. ;  as  incomplete  selves, 
206f.,  213,  232,  518;  mysterious 
nature  of,  209f.,  213,  518f.;  as 
having  a  certain  self-determina- 
tion, 213f.,  240f. 

Thompson,  Sib  Wm.,  on  the 
definition   of   Matter,   255. 

Thought,  as  relating  activity, 
63f.,  109,  112,  297;  nature  of 
logical  or  inferential,  109f. ;  as 
resulting  in  judgment  and 
knowledge,  133,  374;  its  uses  in 
religion,  447f. 

Time,  category  of,  as  applied  to 
the  Divine  I3eing,  480f. 

Toukgleneff,   quoted,   331f. 


Tuaoedy,  as   the  highest  form  of 

art,  424f.,  42(>f. 
Tui;m)i;leniu;kg,    iiis  definition  of 

philosophy.  Of. 

Upanishads,  tlio,  conception  of 
pliilosophy  of,  21;  and  of  the 
Divine  Being,  475. 

Utimtakiani.sm,  as  a  school  of 
ethics,  criticized,  343f.,  346f., 
348f.,  351f.,  355;  its  psycliology 
of  pleasure-pains,  a  mistake, 
344f.,  347f.,  350f.    (Chap.  xvi). 

Virtues,  kinds  and  unity  of  the 
(Chap.  XV),  315f.,  317,  323, 
326,  334;  "essence"  of  them 
all,  315f..  323,  324f.,  326,  328, 
334;  classification  of  the,  317; 
of  the  Will,  317f.;  of  the  Judg- 
ment, 318f.,  320;  of  the  Heart, 
321f. 

Will,  uses  of  the  word,  247f., 
301f.,  451;  essential  nature  of, 
301f.;  virtues  of  the,  317f.;  at- 
titude of,  in  the  life  of  religion, 
451f. 

World,  the,  Unity  of,  how  under- 
stood, 181f.,  184f.,  186,  219, 
253f.,  434f.,  462f.,  504;  as  com- 
posed of  things  related,  184f.; 
analysis  of  conception  of  the, 
219,  253;  relations  of  to  the  Di- 
vine Being  (Chap,  xxiii),  506f., 
509. 

World-Ground,  as  a  philosophi- 
cal abstraction,  223f.,  457,  464; 
aa  Moral  Personality,  363f., 
456f.,  401f. ;  from  the  a>sthetical 
point  of  view,  424f.;  as  Abso- 
lute Person  (Chap,  xxi),  460f., 
464,  468f.,  474,  476,  47Sf.,  481f., 
483. 

Wundt,  on  relations  of  phi- 
losophy to  psychology,  16;  on 
ethics  as  a  science,  270,  273;  on 
the  virtues  of  primitive  man, 
322;   and  on  humanity,  322. 

Zelxeb,  quoted,   4. 


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